
iiiiiilipil • 

! If, S |1 i I ( 't«'- 



Pi * * ' ' i^'- ■ 




!ij 



■■■'.lli t 



m 






!i i. 



THEEE CENTUEIES 



MODERN HISTORY. 



THREE CENTURIES 



OF 



MODEKN HISTORY. 



BY 



CHAELES DUKE YONGE, 

Kcgius Professor of Modem History and English Literature in Queen's College, Belfast, 
Author of ' A School History of England,' ' Three Centuries of English Literature,' 

&C 



'L'hisioire peint le coeur humain: <^est dans Vhistoire qu'il 
faut chercher les avanlages et les inconvinients des diffirentei 
Ugislations.' — NAPOiiiOif, Rfiponse 3. 1'Adresse du Conseil d'fitat, 
Corresp. No. 19,390. 



NEW YORK: 
D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 

549 & 551 BEOADWAT. 

1878. 






£zchange 
Univ. of Mich, 

^^•^^2 3 194 J 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



1494. 
1495. 



1498. 
1499. 



1503. 

1508. 
1511. 
1512. 
1513. 
1515. 
1516, 



CHAPTEE I. 

FAGB 

Plan and object of the work 1 

State of Europe at the close of the 15th Centufy . . 2 

Discovery of the Mariner's Compass and of Printing . . 3 

Eagerness of French Statesmen for a footing in Italy . 4 

Character of Charles VIII. of France .... 4 

He invades Italy 5 

The League of Venice 6 

Charles retreats from Italy 7 

Gronsalvo de Cordova lands in Calabria .... 7 

The Battle of Seminara 7 

The Battle of Fornovo 8 

Death of Charles VIII 8 

Louis XII. invades Italy 9 

Frederic of Naples submits 9 

Gronsalvo takes Taranto . . . . . . .10 

The Battle of Cerignola [ 11 

Death of Pope Alexander 12 

The Battle of the Garigliano 13 

The League of Cambrai 14 

The Holy League 15 

The Battle of Eavenna . ' 16 

Death of Pope Julius 17 

Death of Louis XIL 17 

Death of Ferdinand 17 

Characters of the two Monarchs , . , . .18 



CHAPTEE n. 

Character and views of Columbus 

1492. He sails from Spain . 
He reaches the Bahamas . 
And Hayti ., 

1493. Eeturns to Spain 
Sails on his Second Voyage 

1498. In his Third Voyage he reaches Guiana 
His ill-treatment by Bobadillq. . . 



20 
22 
24 
25 
26 
2f 
28 
29 



VI 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PA6B 

1502. His Fourth Voyage . .30 

1506. His Death . .30 

1517. Discovery of Yucatan . 31 

1519. The Expedition of Cortez 33 

He reaches Tabasco . .33 

High Civilization of Mexico 34 

Alarm of Montezuma 35 

Cortez destroys his Fleet . ' 37 

Treachery of Montezuma ....... 38 

The Spaniards arrive in sight of Mexico .... 39 

Submission of Montezuma . . . . . . .41 

Cortez attacks and defeats Narvaez 42 

1520. Uprising of the Mexicans . . . . . . . 43 

Defeat of the Mexicans . 44 

1521. Arrival of reinforcements .46 

Giiatemozin succeeds to the Mexican throne ... 46 

He is taken prisoner .47 

Wise Administration of Cortez ...... 48 

1547. Death of Cortez 49 



CHAPTER III. 

1515. Francis I. succeeds to the throne of France 

1516. Charles succeeds to the throne of Spain 
1515. Francis invades Italy . . , 

Takes Colonna prisoner 
The Battle of Marignan 
151fl. TheTreatyofNoyon 

Mutual Jealousies of Francis and Charles 

1519. Death of Maximilian 
Charles is elected Emperor 

1520. Francis declares war against the Emperor 
Loyola is wounded at Pampeluna 
Defence of Mezieres by Bayard . 
Character of Louisa of Savoy 
Parity of Loyalty among the French Nation 

1523. Eevolt of the Constable Bourbon 

1524. Death of Bayard .... 

1525. Francis recovers Milan 
Pope Clement VII. concludes a Treaty with him 
The Battle of Pavia . 
Francis is taken prisoner . 

1526. The Treaty of Madrid 
The Holy Leagije .... 
Bourbon takes Milan .... 

1527. Death of Bourbon .... 



51 
51 
52 
53 
54 
56 
67 
58 
59 
59 
60 
60 
61 
62 
63 
63 
64 
65 
66 
67 
68 
69 
69 
71 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Vll 



PAGE 

The Sack of Eo^e 71 

Capture of the Pope .72 

1544. The Battle of Cerisoles 73 



CHAPTER IV. 

Eeformers of the Middle Ages — ^WicklifFe — Huss — Savon 
arola ....... 

1513. Death of Pope Julius and Accession of Leo X 
1517. Luther denounces Indulgences . 

Importance of the Principles involved in the Reformation 

Character of Luther 

1521. Diet of Worms ...... 

1626. Diet of Spires 

Confession of Augsburg , . . . 

Formation of the League of Smalkalde 
1533. Charles grants the Truce of Nuremburg 

Vacillation of Charles and Francis . . 
1544. The Battle of Cerisoles .... 

1546. Death of Luther 

The Council of Trent .... 

Charles commences war against the Protestants 
Maurice of Saxony joins the Emperor 
Irresolution of the Protestant Leaders 

1547. Death of Francis I. • 
The Battle of Muhlberg . 
Arrogance and cruelty of Charles 

1548. Charles publishes the Interim . 
1551. Maurice makes alliance with Henry II. of France 
1652. They make war upon the Emperor 

Henry captures Metz and other towns 

Charles flees from Iniispruck 

The Peace of Passau . 
1553. The Duke of Guise defends Metz 
1555. Death of Maurice of Saxony 

Death of Joanna 

Charles abdicates the Throne . 

His Life at Yuste 
1 558. His Death and Character . 



in Lorraine 



74 
75 
76 
77 
78 
79 
80 
80 
81 
81 
82 
82 
82 
83 
83 
84 
85 
86 
87 
87 
88 
89 
89 
90 
90 
91 
91 
92 
92 
93 
94 
95 



CHAPTER V. 

1 558. Success of Philip at the beginning of his Reign . 
The Treaty of Chiteau Cambresis # . , 

Character of Philip 

His zeal for Persecution 



98 

98 

99 

100 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Regency of Margaret of Parma . 
Character of Cardinal Grranvelle 
And of William the Silent ; . . 

Popularity of Charles V. in the Netherlands 
The Compromise ..... 

1566. Les Gneux 

Tumults at Antwerp ..... 
William leaves the Netherlands 

1567. The Duke of Alva is sent to the Netherlands 
Execution of Egmont ajid Horn , 

15G8. Cruelty of the Persecution instituted . 

Beginning of the Eevolt of the Netherlands 
The Battle of Jemmingen .... 
Philip approves the cruelties practised by Alva 
Alva's Financial Devices .... 

1573. He resigns his post 

1574. The Provinces renounce their allegiance to Spai 

1576. Don John succeeds Requesens as Governor 
His Love for Mary of Scotland . 

1577. The Spanish Fury at Antwerp . • .. 
The Union of Brussels . .. . . 

1578. The Perpetual Edict . . . ... 

Lukewarmness of Queen Elizabeth 
The Archduke Matthias becomes Governor General 
The Battle of Gembloux . . , . 
Death of the Dauphin .... 



PAGB 

100 
101 
101 
103 
103 
104 
104 
105 
106 
107 
108 
110 
110 
111 
112 
113 
114 
IH 
115 
116 
117 
118 
119 
120 
121 
122 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Duke of Parma becomes Governor of the Netherlands 123 

1579. The Capture of Maestricht 123 

The Union of Utrecht 124 

1580. An Embassy is sent to the Duke of Anjou . . . . 125 
Philip ofiers a reward for the murder of the Prince of 

Orange . . . 125 

1584. The Prince is murdered . . . . . . .125 

Character of William the Silent 126 

His son Maurice succeeds as Head of the Coimcil . . 12? 
Henry ni. of France is invited to be Protector of the 

Netherlands 127 

Successes of Parma . . . . . . . .128 

The Siege of Antwerp 129 

Parma bridges the Scheldt . . ,• . . ,131 

1585. Attack on Boisleduc 131 

Gianibelli builds explosion ships 133 

St. Aldegonde pierces one of the Dykes . . . . 1 34 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



IX 



1586, 
1587. 
1691. 
1592. 

1597. 
1598. 

1601. 

1603. 
1604. 



1609. 



PAOE 

Defeat of the Enterprise ....... 135 

Sxirrender of Antwerp ....... 136 

Elizabeth aids the Netherlanders 137 

Misconduct of the Earl of Leicester 137 

Parma is removed to France ...... 138 

Is mortally wounded 138 

Maurice of Orange introduces military reforms . . . 138 
Defeats Varax .......... 139 

Death of Philip II 139 

Interference of Barneveld in military matters . . .140 

The Siege of Ostend 141 

Exchange of Prisoners is introduced 142 

The Marquis Ambrose Spinola takes the command . .142 

Maurice takes Shiys .143 

Spinola takes Ostend. ....... 143 

The Netherlanders destroy a Spanisli Fleet at Gibraltar . 144 
Peace is concluded . . . . . . . .145 

Character and Consequences of the War . . . .145 



CHAPTEE VII. 

The Eeformation in France ...... 147 

1525. Views of Francis I. and his Sucees.sors .... 147 

The Eeformers attack the Images 148 

Vehemence. of Francis I. in persecution .... 149 

1536. Calvin publishes his 'Christian Institution' . . . 149 

1544. The Peace of Crepy 151 

1540. Francis's Edict against the Vaudois 151 

1545. Persecution of the Vaudois 151 

Desolation of the whole district 152 

1547. Death of Francis 1 163 

Character of Francis 153 

1549. The French Parliament refuses to establish the Inquisition 165 

The Protestants begin to resist 155 

1559. Death of Henry IL . . 165 

. Influence of the Guises over Francis II. . . . .156 

1560. Death of Francis and Accession of Charles IX. . . . 157 
Character of Catharine de Medici . . . . .157 
Meeting of the States-General . . . . ... 157 

1561. Catharine at first favours the Protestants . . . . 158 

The Conference at Poissy . . . . . . .158 

The Duke of Guise makes alliance with Philip of Spain . 158 

1662. The Massacre of Passy 158 

1562. Commencement of the Civil "Wars . . . . .159 
1569. The Prince de Conde killed 159 

Henry of Navarre is adopted by the Huguenots as their 

leader . , . 159 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



1572. Marriage of Henry of Navarre , 
The Massacre of St. Bartholomew 

• The Murder of Coligny 
The Slaughter in the Provinces . 
The Pope approves the Massacre 

1573. The Duke of Anjou is elected King of Poland . 

1574. Death of Charles IX. and Accession of Henry III. 
Renewal of the War of the League 

1587. The Battle of Coutras 

Death of the Duke of A]en9on . 
1 589. Assassination of the Duke of Guise 

The Siege of Paris . 

Assassination of Henry III. 



CHAPTEE VIII. 

Character and Difficulties of Henry IV. 

The League proclaims Charles X. ' . 

The Battle of Arques ..... 

Queen Elizabeth sends Henry reinforcements 
1590. Story of prodigies seen in the sky 

The Battle of Ivry 

Philip sends the Duke of Parma to support Mayenne 

1592. Death of Parma 

1693. Henry becomes a Roman Catholic 

1594. He is cro^vned at Chartres .... 
He enters Paris 

1595. Mayenne submits 

1598. The Peace of Vervins and Edict of Nantes 

Exhaustion of Prance produced by the late wars 

Sully becomes Minister ..... 

Three great Finance Ministers of France : Sully, Colbert, 

Turgot 

1598- Licentiousness of Henry . . . . , 
1610. Energy and financial skill of Sully . 

Political objects of Henry himself 

He weakens the power of the Nobles 

Biron's Conspiracy 

1600. Henry marries Marie de Medici ... 

Henry's measures for the encoviragement of trade 

Establishes a Colony in Canada 

His plans for humbling the House of Austria 
601. His Negotiations with Elizabeth . . . 

Different Views of James I 

He concludes a Treaty with James . . . . , 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



XI 



1609. He recalls the Jesuits 184 

1610. He is murdered by Eavaillac 185 

Character of Henry . . 186 

Is the first King in Europe to establish a Ministry . .186 



CHAPTER IX. 



1626. 
1C17. 
1619, 

1620. 

1623. 

1620. 
1628. 

1629, 

1630. 
1631. 

1632 



1633. 
1634, 



Ferdinand becomes King of Bohemia 
Zeal of the Bohemians for Independence . 
Bigotry of Ferdinand, Archduke of Styria . 

Kiots at Prague 

Ferdinand becomes Emperor .... 
Frederic, Elector-Palatine, is elected King of Bohemia 
Beginning of the Thirty Years' War . 
Character of Frederic ..... 
James of England refuses to support him . 
Spinola overruns the Palatinate .... 
Frederic's army is defeated at Prague 
Ferdinand annuls the liberties of Bohemia 
Skill of Frederic's general, Count Mansfeld 
France and England and the German Protestants 
A Protestant League is formed in the North 
AVallestein raises an Army for Ferdinand . 
He besieges Stralsund ..... 
Gustavus Adolphus aids Stralsund 
Ferdinand publishes his Edict of Restitution 
Richelieu sends Father Joseph to mediate betwsen 

Kings of Sweden and Poland . . 
Ferdinand dismisses Wallestein 
Military Reforms of Gustavus .... 
Gustavus invades Germany .... 
Gustavus concludes a Treaty with Louis XIII. . 

His rapid successes 

The Siege and sack of Magdeburg 

A British division joins Gustavus 

He defeats Tilly at Breitenfeldt 

Gustavus defeats Tilly on the Lech and takes Munich 

"Wallestein resumes the command ... 

Gustavus fortifies Nuremburg .... 

Gustavus defeats Wallestein at Lutzen ; but is killed 

Ferdinand's jealousy of Wallestein . 

He procures his assassination .... 

France mingles in the war .... 



the 



188 
188 
189 
190 
191 
191 
191 
192 
192 
193 
193 
193 
194 
194 
194 
195 
196 
196 
197 

197 
198 
198 
199 
200 
200 
201 
202 
202 
204 
205 
205 
207 
209 
210 
212 



xii TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER X. 

PAGE 

1610. Eenewal of intrigues at the French Court . . . . 213 

Favour of the Coneini 213 

Sully is dismissed from office ...... 213 

1614. Conde revolts : the Peace of St.-Menehould . . ,214 
First appearance of Eichelieu at the States- General . .214 

He becomes Almoner to the Queen 216 

Kise of De Luynes 216 

1616. Eichelieu becomes Secretary of State 217 

1617- Assassination of Marshal d'Ancre ; (Coneini) . . . 217 
The Queen's Mother is banished to Blois . . , .218 

1620. Eichelieu mediates between the King and Queen . .219 

1621. Eichelieu is made a Cardinal 220 

1624. Negotiations for the Marriage of the Princess Henrietta 

Maria ■mth the Prince of Wales . . . . ' . 220 

1624. Eichelieu becomes Chief Minister . . . . . 220 

Eevives the Policy of Henry IV 220 

Eichelieu attacks the Huguenots 222 

1621. Huguenot outbreak . . . • 222 

1623. Treaty of Montpelier. . . ... . .223 

1625. Fresh Insurrection of the Huguenots. . . . . 223 

1626. Peace of Eochelle 223 

1627. The Duke of Buckingham comes to the aid of Eochelle . 224 
Eichelieu besieges Eochelle 224 

1628. Distress of the Eochellois. ...... 224 

Lord Lindsey contrives an Infernal Machine . . . 225 

1629. Eochelle surrenders . 225 

1630. Eichelieu is appointed Generalissimo in Piedmont . . 226 

The Day of Dupes 227 

Eichelieu's revenge on his adversaries .... 228 

] 642. Death of Queen Marie 228 

1632. The Duke of Orleans betrays all his friends . . , 229 

1540. Magnificence and rapacity of Eichelieu .... 229 

1635. Eichelieu makes a Treaty of alliance with the German Prot- 

estants . . . . 230 

He declares war against the Empire ..... 230 

1636. The Infante invades France and reaches Corbie . . .231 
The First Command of Turenne . . . • . . .231 

1642. Eichelieu dies. His Character 231 

He recommends Mazarin as his Successor . . . . 233 

1638. Birth of the Dauphin . . . . . . .233 

1643. Death of Louis XIII 234 

The Battle of Eocroi . . . . . . .235 

1645. The Battle of Nordlingen 236 

1648. The Battle of Lens 237 

The Peace of Westphalia 237 



TAELE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTEE XI. 



1600. 



1649. 



1650. 
1651. 



1652, 



1657. 
1658. 
]660, 

1661. 



Origin of the Establishment of La Paulette 

Encroachments of the Parliament 

Character of Mazarin 

He abolishes La Paulette ..... 

Breaking out of La Fronde .... 

Arrest of Broussel 

Character of Gondi, afterwards Cai'dinal de Eetz 
The Citizens erect Barricades .... 
Cond6 arrives in Paris ..... 

His Hostility to Mazarin 

Beginning of Civil War . . . . . 

Singular character of the whole Rebellion . 

Effect of the Murder of Charles I. on the Parisians 

The Peace of Euel ...... 

Litrigues of de Eetz. ..... 

Arrest of Conde ...... 

Division of the Fronde into the Old and New , 
Energy of Mademoiselle de Montpensier . 

Union of the two Frondes 

Mazarin releases Conde, and quits France. 
The young King is detained in Paris by de Eetz 
View taken by the French Clergy of their relative 

to the Pope and to their Country 
The Queen offers de Eetz the office of Prime Minister. 
Conde revives the Civil "War 
Forms alliance with the Spaniards . 
Seeks the alliance of Cromwell . ... 
Mazarin returns to France 
Mademoiselle de Montpensier occupies Orleans 
The Battle of St.-Antoine .... 
Conde joins the Spaniards in the Netherlands 

End of the Fronde 

Mazarin concludes a Treaty with Cromwell. 
The Battle of the Dunes .... 
Louis marries the Infanta .... 
He annexes Orange to France . 
Death and Character of Mazarin. 



duties 



CHAPTEE XII. 

Louis resolves tc be his own Prime Minister . . . 261 

Character of Louis 263 

Abilities of Colbert and Louvois ..... 264 

Colbert's financial Policy 265 

His patronage of learned men 266 



XIV TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

1683. Louis dismisses him. ....... 266 

Policy of Louvois 267 

1671. Vast numbers of the French Armies ..... 268 

1674. The Eavages of the Palatinate 268 

1683. The Queen dies .270 

Louis marries Madame de Maintenon 271 

1691. Louvois dies of apoplexy 272 

1650. Rise of the Jansenists 272 

Pascal's ' Provincial Letters '...».. 273 

1683. Persecution of the Huguenots 274 

Louis not however friendly to the Pope . . . .274 
Enactment of laws against emigration .... 275 

1685. The Dragonnades in the South 275 

Eevoeation of the Edict of Nantes . . . . . 277 

Extent of the Emigration . 277 

Popularity of the Revocation 277 

Persecution in the Cevennes . . . ... . 278 

Insurrection of the Camisards 279 

Extraordinary cruelty of Montrevel 280 

1703. Clement XL publishes a Crusade against the Camisards . 280 
Suppression of the Insurrection by Villars . . .281 
Subsequent Career of Cavalier . ... . . .281 

Vitality of Protestantism in Prance 281 

Prevalence of the persecuting spirit in France. Dubois. 

St.-Simon 282 

Cruelty of the Duke of Berwick . . . . .282 
Voltaire's denunciation of the persecution . . c . 283 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Aggressions of the Turks on the Eastern provinces of the 

Empire 284 

1524. Capture of Belgrade 284 

1526. Solyman defeats Lewis of Hungary at Mohacz . . . 284 
1545. Solyman makes alliance with Francis I. and overruns 

Hungary '. . . 285 

He captures Rhodes . . . . . . . ' . 285 

1569. He .attacks Cyprus 286 

Pope Pius V. espouses the cause of Venice. . . .287 

1670. Nicosia is taken. . . • . . . . • . 287 

1571. Don John is appointed to the command of the Allied Fleet. 238 

Famagosta is taken 289 

The Battle of Lepanto 289 

Superiority of the Spanish equipment and arms. . . 290 

Exultation of all Christendom 292 

Cervantes is disabled, and writes ' Don Quixote ' . . 293 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



XV 



PAGE 

Continued hostilities between the Porte and the Empire . 293 

1C60. The Grand Vizier Kiiipriuli invades Hungary . . . 294 

Monteeuculi is appointed Commander of the Imperial Army 294 

Interference of the Aalic Council 295 

1663. Monteeuculi receives reinforcements 296 

He defeats the Turks at St.-Gothard 297 

166i. The Turks solicit peace 299 

Reforms in Hungary 299 

The Revolt of Tekeli 299 

1683. The Turks again invade Hungary 300 

The Duke of Lorraine is the Imperial Commander-in-chief 300 
The Emperor makes a Treaty with Sobieski, King of 

Poland . 300 

The Turks are routed under the walls of Vienna . .301 

Ingratitude of Leopold to Sobieski ..... 302 

1687. The Duke of Lorraine defeats the Turks at Mohacz . . 302 

Great losses of the Turks in different quarters . . . > 302 

1695. Mustapha II. invades Hungary 303 

Early Career of Prince Eugene 303 

1697. He is appointed Commander-in-chief of the Imperial 

Armies . SOI- 

The Battle of Zenta 305 

Ingratitude of the Emperor 306 

The Treaty of Carlowitz 306 

Gradual decay of the Turkish power 306 



1678- CHAPTER XIV. 

1700. Character of the latter years of the reign of Louis XIV. . .'507 

1678. The arrest of Matthioli, I'Homme au Masque de Fer. . 308 

Louis wrests Avignon from the Pope .... 309 

1688. He declares war against the Emperor 310 

The Capture of Philipsburg 310 

Duras ravages the Palatinate 311 

Catinat's successes in Piedmont 312 

1611. Luxembourg commands in the Netherlands . . .313 

1693. The Battle of Nierwinden 313 

1695. Death of Luxemboxirg 315 

Boundless extravagance of Louis . . . . .316 

General distress of the country 316 

1697. The Peace of Ryswick 317 

Performance of Racine's 'Esther* 317 

1698. The Review at Compiegne . , 318 

The Partition Treaty. 319 

1700. Death of the Prince of Bavaria 321 

Charles II. of Spain leaves his Kingdom to the Duke ofAnjou, 

and dies 321 



•XVI TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

TAGK 

1701. Louis acknowledges the Pretender as King of England . 322 

1702. William IIL of England dies 322 

Disasters of France in the War of the Succession . . 322 

1711. Death of the Emperor Joseph 1 323 

1713. The Peace of Utrecht .323 

1700- Louis persecutes the Jansenists and destroys the Convent 

1715. ofPort-Eoyal 324 

Numerous deaths in his family 324 

1715. Death of Louis XIV 325 

Character of Louis XIV 326 

Literary brilliancy of his reign . . , . , .327 



CHAPTEE XV. 

1697. Eussia was a party to the Treaty of Carlowitz . . . 330 

Eussia was known to the English in the reign of Henry VIII. 330 

1660. Designs of the Czar Alexis against Turkey. . . . 330 

1682. Accession of Peter to the Tlirone 331 

1689. He imprisons the Princess Sophia ' . . . . . 331 

He resolves to civilise his subjects . . . . . 332 

He resolves to organise a navy . . . . . . 333 

1694. He takes Azov . . 333 

He enters Moscow in triumph 334 

1697. Travels to Holland and England 334 

He visits Vienna 336 

1698. Conspiracy of the Clergy and Strelitzes .... 336 
Peter declares himself Head of the Eussian Church . . 337 
He reforms every part of the Empire . . . .337 
He organises a powerful army 338 

1697. Accession of Charles XII. to the throne of Sweden , . 339 
Eigour of the Swedish Government 339 

1698. Augiistixs of Saxony becomes King of Poland . . . 339 

1700. Eussia and Saxony declare war against Sweden . . . 339 
Charles defeats the Duke of Holstein and Augustus . . 340 
Peter besieges Narva . , . . . , . 340 
The Eussians are defeated by Charles .... 343 

1701. Peter prosecutes his reform and recruits his army . . 343 
1702- He raises an efficient fleet. . . . ■ . . . 344 

1703. Condition of Poland 344 

1704. Charles compels the Diet to depose Augustus . . . 344 
Charles the First's friendship is courted by every Sovererign 

in Europe . . 345 

1706. Peter founds St. Petersburg . . , . . .346 

1708. Charles invades Eussia . 347 

Defeats the Eussians at HoUosin ..... 348 

Peter lays waste the country in his line of march . . 348 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



XVll 



Charles is joined by Mazeppa . 

Peter defeats Levenhaupt . 
1709. The Battle of Pultava 

Peter replaces Augustus on his throne 

CharleS takes refuge in Bender . 
1715. Chai'les makes peace with Peter. 
1718. Is killed at Frederickshall. 

The Death of the Czarovitch . 
1725. Death of Peter. 

His Character .... 



PAGE 

348 
349 
351 
352 
352 
352 
352 
353 
355 
355 



CHAPTER XVI. 

1700. Frederic Margrave of Brandenburgh becomes King of 

Prussia 357 

Origin of his Family ^57 

Albert of Brandenburgh 358 

The Great Elector 359 

1688. Policy of Frederic I. ,...,.. 360 

Character and Policy of Frederick William I. . . . 36l 

1725. The Treaty of Hanover 362 

1740. Death of Frederic William and Accession of Frederic II. . 364 

Death of Charles VI 365 

1740. Frederic invades Silesia 366 

1741. The Battle of Molwitz 366 

Maria Teresa at Presburg 367 

1745. The Peace of Dresden . 368 

Frederic is hailed by his people as the Great . . , 368 
1 745- Institutes great reforms and improvements at home . .369 

1755 Severity of his Military Code 372 

1753. Voltaire's Visit to Berlin 373 

1754. Kaunitz becomes Prime Minister of Austria , . . 374 
Austria makes alliance with France and Russia . , . 375 

1756. The Seven Years' War 376 

1756. Frederic defeats the Saxon Army 376 

1757. The Battle of Prague 377 

The Battle of Kolin 377 

1758. The Battle of Rosbach 379 

The Battles of Lissa and Leuthen 380 

1759. The Battles of Zorndof, Hochkirch, and Kunersdof . . 381 

1760. Berlin is taken 382 

1761. Death of the Empress of Russia 382 

1763. The Peace of Hubertsburg 382 

1763-86. Frederic's exertions to repair the ravages of the war . 383 



xvm 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

PAGE 

17 15- Weakness of the Reign of Louis XV 3S4 

1774. Character of the Regent, Duke of Orleans. . . . 384 

1727- Eleury becomes Prime Minister. . . . •. . 385 

1743. Advantages derived from his peaceful policy . . . 387 

1730. Louis marries Maria Leczinski 387 

1736. Death of the Duke of Berwick 387 

1738. Peace of Vienna 388 

1737. Henry aids the Genoese to crush the Revolt of Corsica . 389 
1743. Fleury dies 389 

The Campaigns of Marshal Saxe 390 

Profligacies of Louis XV 390 

1746. The Battle of Raucoux 391 

Great distress of the lower orders . , . . . 392 

1753. Indications of a coming rebellion 392 

1750. Infidelity of the scholars of this reign .... 392 
• Career and character of Voltaire ..... 393 

1751. Rousseau and the Encyclopaedists 394 

Renewal of the Quarrel between the Jesuits and Jansenists 395 

1754. Birth of Louis XVL . , . . . . .396 

1755. Renewal of religious Persecutions ..... 396 
Cruelty of Richelieu in Languedoc ..... 396 
Defeats in Canada and in India ..... 397 
Descents of the British Fleet on the coast .... 397 

1763. Administration of Machault 398 

1771. Factious Conduct and Suppression of the Parliament . 400 

Abolition of the Order of Jesuits ..... 401 

1774. Death of Louis XV 401 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



Influence of Russia in Poland .... 

Ancient power and glory of Poland . 

Vices of the Polish Constitution 
1572. Henry, Duke of Anjou, is elected King of Poland 
1693. Sobieski is elected King . . . 
1709. Augustus of Saxony is King of Poland 

1763. Death of Augustus II . 

1762. Catharine II. becomes Empress of Russia 

Alliance between Russia and Prussia 
1770. Proposal of the Partition of Poland 

Former plans for that object 
1772. First Partition. 
1786. Death of Frederic the Great . 

Beneficent wisdom of his later years 

Previous Career of Soiivarof 



. 403 

. 404 

. 404 

. 405 

. 406 

. 407 

. 407 

. 408 

. 409 

. 410 

. 410 

. 411 

. 413 

. 414 

. 415 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



1788. 
1790. 

1792. 
1780. 
1790. 
1791. 
1792. 

1793. 



1794, 



1817. 



He defeats the Turks on the Eimniks . 
Siege of Ismail ..... 

The town is stormed and sacked 
The Peace of Jassy ..... 
Death of Maria Teresa .... 
Death of the Emperor Joseph . 
The Poles reform their Constitution . 
The anti-reformers appeal to Catharine 
The Russians invade Poland 
Second Partition of Poland 

The Diet of Grodno 

Early Career of Kosciusko 
He raises his standard at Cracow 
Souvarof takes the command against him . 
Storm of Praga, and end of the Insurrection 
Pinal Partition of Poland .... 
Subsequent History of Poland . , . 
Causes of the ruin of the nation . , 
Death of Kosciusko ..... 



CHAPTER XIX. 



1774. 



Cliaracter of Louis XVI. .... 
Character of Marie Antoinette . . . 
Great diflSculties of the Government . 
The Parliament is restored 
Turgot becomes Finance Minister 
Great wisdom of his Government 

1777. His plan of Constitutional Reform 
He is dismissed ..... 
Necker becomes Minister . . . . 
Character of him and of Calonne 

1778. France concludes a Treaty with the Insurgents 
Character of La Fayette .... 

1783. Distress of the Country .... 

1787. Demand for the States-General 
Ministry of Lomenie de Brienne 
Necker returns to office .... 
Necker grants all the demands of the extreme 

the Reformers . . . . • 
Grievances under which the People laboured 
Moderation of the Nobles .... 
Composition of the States-General 
Ill-feeling of the Lower Classes towards the Nobles 
Character of the Duke of Orleans 
Jacobin Club. Robespierre . . 



1788. 



in America 



party among 



xx 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Character and early career of Mirabeau 

Mirabeau offers to support tKe Government, but is re^ 

by Necker ..... 
Mirabeau connects himself with the Duke of Orleans 
Louis abolishes the chief abuses 
Kesemblance of his measure to the Charter of 1814 
The States-General adopt the name of the National 

sembly . . . . 
Destruction of the Bastille 
Emigration of the Count d'Artois 
Louis visits Paris .... 
Disturbances in the Provinces . 
Abolition of all privileges and exclusive rights 
Character of Madame Eoland . . . 



sjected 



As- 



PAOK 

440 



442 
442 
443 
444 

445 
446 
446 
446 
447 
448 
449 



CHAPTER XX. 

Louis refuses to transfer the Assembly to Tours . . 450 
Disgraceful conduct of Lafayette , . . . . .451 

Pillage of the Hotel de Ville . . . . . .451 

The Mob march on Versailles ...... 452 

Louis assents to the Declaration of the Eights of Man . 452 

The Mob force the Palace 453 

Valour and loyalty of the body-guard .... 454 

Heroism of the Queen 455 

The King and Royal Family go to Paris . . . . 445 

Emigration of the Nobles . . . . . . . 456 

Change of Mirabeau's views 457 

The Assembly abolishes the Parliament .... 458 

1790. Louis sanctions all that has been done . . . . 459 
The Assembly swears fidelity to the Constitution . . 459 

All Titles are abolished 459 

The Assembly deprives the King of the power of peace and 

war 460 

The Ceremony in the Champs de Mars .... 460 
Mirabeau advises Louis to quit Paris . . . ,461 

Necker resigns his office 462 

A new Ecclesiastical Constitution is framed . . . . 462 

1791. Death of Mirabeau 463 

The Mob prevent the King from going to St. -Cloud . . 464 
The Assembly prohibits Ms going more tban ten miles from 

Paris 464 

The King quits Paris 464 

He is stopped at Varennes 465 

Barnave defends the King's Conduct 466 

Violence of Robespierre and the Jacobins .... 467 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



XXI 



PAGE 

Dissolution of the Assembly ...... 467 

Composition of the new Assembly 468 

Eise of the Grirondins 469 

1792. A Girondin Ministry is formed . . . . . 470 

Character of Dumouriez 471 

Dissolution of the Constitutional Guard .... 472 

Louis refuses to consent to a Decree against the Priests . 472 

Dumouriez resigns his office 473 

Battle of Neerwinden 474 

Exile of Dumouriez ........ 474 



CHAPTER XXI. 



i793, 



Eise of the Cordeliers . 475 

Character of Danton and Murat ..... 475 

The Cordeliers and Girondins organise a new riot . . 477 

The Mob force the gates of the Tuileries .... 479 

Heroism of the King and Queen ..... 480 

Plans for the Escape of the Royal Eamily .... 481 

Corruption of all the Cordeliers and Girondins . . . . 482 

A fresh attack on the Tuileries is organised . . . 483 

Treason of many of the troops ...... 484 

The Royal Pamily take refuge with the Assembly . . 485 

Slaughter of the Swiss Guard 487 

Honour paid to their valour in their own country . . 488 

Scene in the Assembly ... ... 488 

The Royal Family is removed to the Temple . . . 488 

Meeting of the Convention . . . . . . 490 

Imbecility and cowardice of the Girondins. . . . 490 

The Jacobins demand the Trial of the King . . . 491 

Louis is brought before the Convention .... 492 

Difference between his conduct and that of Charles I. . 492 

Louis makes his Will ....... 494 

De Seze speaks in his Defence ...... 495 

Vehemence of the Debates in the Convention . . . 496 

Efforts of Lanjuinais in favour of Louis .... 497 

Louis is condemned to death ...... 498 

His last Interview with his Family ..... 499 

Execution of the sentence. ...... 500 

Character of Louis and comparison of him with Charles 1 . 501 



XXll TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

PAGE 

The Eeign of Terror 602 

Erequency of Changes in the Government. . . . 503 

Rise of Napoleon Buonaparte 503 

1793. Siege of Toulon 504 

1796. Buonaparte marries and obtains the command of the Army 

of Italy 505 

Rapidity of his Victories : Montenotte, Mondovi, Lodi, &c. 606 
He plunders the Italian cities of their works of Art . . 507 
He drives the Austrians from the North of Italy . . 508 

1797. Completes the Treaty of Campo-Eormio .... 508 
The Directory fear him 509 

1798. He takes the command of an Expedition against Egypt . 509 
Declares himself a Mahometan 610 

1799. He is repulsed from Acre . 610 

Disasters of the French Armies in the North of Italy , 610 
Divisions in the Directory. ...... 611 

Buonaparte returns to France . ' . . . . .512 

The Revolution of the 1 8th Brumaire .... 613 

Comparison of Napoleon's Conduct with Cromwell's in 1653 614 
Buonaparte becomes F'irst Consul . . . . .614 

1800. He occupies the Tiiileries . . . . . . .615 

He offers peace to England and Germany . . . ,516 

He invades Piedmont 516 

Sacrifices the Army of Mass ena. . . . . .517 

The Battle of Marengo . , . . . . .518 

1800. The Battle of Hohenlinden 620 

1801. The Treaty of Luneville 620 

1802. The Peace of Amiens . .520 

Buonaparte's power is prolonged two years . . . 520 
His activity in civil and legislative reforms . . . 521 
He re-establishes Christianity as the Religion of the State. 522 

1801. He proposes a Concordat to the Pope .... 523 
His perfidy to Consalvi . . . . . . . 524 

1802. Signature of the Concordat 625 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

1802. Napoleon's Foreign Policy. . . . . , . 526 

1803. Renewal of War . . . . . . . .527 

Detention of the English Travellers . . . . . 528 

1804. Buonaparte becomes Emperor 628 

He puts the Duke d'Enghien to death .... 529 

He arrests Moreau and Pichegru 530 

Pichegru is murdered . . . . , . ,631 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. XXlll 

FAOB 

The Pope visits Paris . 531 

Coronation of Napoleon ....... 532 

1805. He is crowned at Milan as King of Italy .... 632 

He plans an Invasion of England ..... 533 

The Battle of Trafalgar . . . . . . .633 

Napoleon transfers his Army to the Danube . . . 633 

. Mack surrenders at Ulni . . . . . . . 534 

Napoleon takes Vienna ....... 534 

The Battle of Austerlitz 635 

1806. Erancis renounces the Title of Emperor of Germany. . 537 
Prussia forms an alliance with Napoleon and obtains 

Hanover . . 538 

The Execution of Palm 538 

Prussia declares war against France. .... 538 

The Battles of Jena and'Auerstadt 532 

Capture of Berlin 639 

1807. The Battle of Eylau 639 

The Peace of Tilsit 639 

The Berlin Decrees . . . . . . . . 540 

1809. Renewal of war with Austria ...... 641 

The Battles of Essling and Wagram 641 

Napoleon divorces Josephine ...... 642 

1810. He marries an Austrian Archduchess, Maria Louisa . . 542 
1809. Napoleon strips the Pope of his Dominions . . . 543 

Victories of the British in the Peninsula .... 543 

Napoleon's attacks on Portugal and Spain .... 544 

1807-8.He kidnaps the Spanish Princes 545 

1808. He makes Joseph King of Spain 645 

Beginning of the Peninsular War ..... 645 

■ Unvarying Success of the British Troops .... 646 



CHAPTEE XXIV. 

1811. Napoleon annexes to Frances extensive territories in the 

North 647 

1812. He declares war against Eussia 548 

1811. Birth of his Son, the King of Eome 648 

1812. Vastness of the force assembled for the Invasion of Eussia 649 
Alexander's plan for resisting the Invasion . . . 650 

Napoleon enters Moscow 661 

Alexander refuses to treat. . . . . . .551 

Miseries of the French Eetreat 652 

Intelligence of the Battle of Salamanca . , . .653 
The Passage of the Beresina . . . . , .554 
Mallet's Conspiracy 655 

1813. Prussia unites with Eussia ...... 555 



xxiv TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Napoleon returns to Germany 556 

Battles of Lutzen and Baiitzen 55fi 

Armistice .......... 567 

Battle of Vittoria ........ 557 

Austria and Bavaria declare war against France. . . 557 

The Battle of Dresden 658 

Battles of the Katzbach, Culm, and Dennewitz . . 658 

"Wellington crosses the Bidassoa, and invades France. . 658 

Napoleon prepares to retreat ...... 559 

The Battle of Leipsic . . . . . . .560 

Exhaustion of France 660 

1814. Characters of Schwartzenberg and Blucher . . . 560 

The Allies invade France 560 

The Congress is opened at Chatillon. . . . . 661 

Paris capitulates ........ 563 

Napoleon is dethroned, and becomes King of Elba . . 663 

Napoleon's unpopularity in the South of France . . 664 

1815. Napoleon quits Elba, and returns to France . . . 594 

Insurrection in La Vendee 565 

The Duke of Wellington and Blucher command in Flanders 665 

The Battles of Lignyand Q,uatre Bras .... 667 

The Battle of Waterloo . . ... . . .668 

Napoleon is sent to St, Helena 569 

1821. He dies 569 

His Character 670 



Errata. 
Page 163, line afor eastern read western 



„ 169, 


„ 11 „ saw „ seen 


„ 174, 


„ 13 after against insert him. 


„ 182, 


„ 16 „ calls „ ' the great design 


„ 185, 


„ 13 /or intercept 7-ead intemipt 


„ 186, 


„ 35 „ on „ or 


„ 195, 


„ 27 „ freedom „ prudence 


„ 197, 


„ 34 ,, unsurpassed „ sm-passed 


„ 300, 


„ 18 „ rejected „ rejecting 


„ 205, 


„ 15 „ juncture „ junction 



THEEE CENTUEIES 



MODEBN HISTORY. 



CHAPTER I. 
A.D. 1485 — 1515. 



rilllE object with -vfLIch tlie present work has been undertaken 
J- is to give the youthful student some idea of the general history 
of Continental Europe in what may be called modern times. It is 
not designed to present a complete history of any one country, nor 
even of any one period in the history of any country. It may be 
compared to a skeleton chart of Europe on which the boundaries 
of the different countries, the courses of a few great rivers, and 
the situation of some of the chief cities, are marked out sufficiently 
to guide the student in filling up the outline ; but which, for a 
more precise knowledge of any separate country, leaves him to 
consult maps more elaborately filled up. On a somewhat similar 
principle it is here endeavoured, by presenting, in a connected 
series, a set of sketches of some of the transactions of the most 
conspicuous interest or importance in the annals of the different 
nations of Modern Europe, to shew how real the connection often, 
it may perhaps be said, generally, is between the events of one age 
or country and those of another, and to induce some readers to 
follow out for themselves the investigation of the causes of action 
thus suggested with greater minuteness, to study the higtory of 
the difi'erent countries, or of some of them, in greater detail. 
There can be no more interesting study than that of History, even 
if it be regarded merely as an intellectual employment ; while, 
if considered with a view to its practical usefulness as the great 
lesson-book of statesmen, it can hardly be superfluous occasionally 
tn remind its students that nations cannot stand alone any more 
llian individuals; that, like individuals, they tooliave responsibili- 



2 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1485. 

ties; that in them also misconduct in one age is nearly sure to 
entail suffering in another, and that themostmagnanimous, humann, 
and unseliish policy towards others is the wisest, not only for their 
reputation but for their material interests. 

Hallani closes his History of the 'Middle Ages' at the moment 
when ' the dark and. wil^' Ferdinand, the rash and lively Maxi- 
milian are preparing to enter the lists,' Italy being the chosen field 
of battle, and its fairest provinces the prize of victory. The great 
series of events of which he thus indicates the approach may 
therefore for our purpose be looked upon as the commencement of 
Modern as distinguished from Mediaeval History. But the Italian 
wars, long and exciting as they were, and illustrated by such 
striking incidents as the captivity of a king and the storm and 
sack of the time-honoured metropolis of the Christian world, are 
yet not the occurrences which give the most distinctive features to 
this new period or division of history. Those are impressed upon 
it by other transactions and events, some of which had recently 
taken place, and others were immediately at hand ; some were of 
a character to influence the subsequent policy of single but niosl 
important nations, others were destined to have a powerful and 
permanent effect on the fortunes of the whole world. 

Let us look first at those which affected separate kingdoms. In 
France the establishment of a standing army by Charles VII., 
followed by the unwearied and unswerving perseverance of Louis 
XL, who died a few months after our Edward IV., had finally 
crushed the liberties of the people, had for ever broken down the 
feudal power of the nobles, and had rendered the crown for all 
practical purposes entirely absolute ; while the acquisition of 
33urgundy which Louis accomplished, and the annexation of 
Brittany which followed a few years later, when his son and suc- 
cessor married the heiress of that great Duchy, were accessions 
to the wealth and martial power of the kingdom, calculated, if 
they should be emplo^'^ed with judgment, to give her, in her cen- 
tral position, a weight in the councils of all the surrounding 
States, which she had not enjoyed since the days of Charlemagne ; 
while at the same time Louis' own perfidy and cruelty contributed 
to raise him up a formidable rival, by driving Mary, the daughter 
of Charles the Bold, to seek protection from his treacherous enmity 
in a marriage with the Emperor Maximilian. Her splendid in- 
heritance of Flanders, which the French king could not wrest 
from her, greatly augmented the resources and power of the 
House of Austiia on one side, while Maximilian's own sagacity 
and address, as showr in the negotiations with Ladislaus, securec^ 
to his family the succession of Bohemia and Hungary on the other 



A.D. 1485.] STATE OF EUKOPE. 3 

and tlius com^erted the Empire from a shadowy phantom into a 
substantial reality, which for three centuries roused the fears and 
jealousies of every French statesman j and gave rise to an almost 
ceaseless succession of wars in which, on the whole, the fortunes 
of the two nations were not unevenly balanced. On the other 
side of the Pyrenees, the union of the crowns of Castile and 
Aragon, by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, with the 
expulsion of the Infidel from the rich southern province of the 
Peninsula, raised Spain, in conjunction with another great event, 
to be mentioned presently, to a height which for a moment over- 
shadowed every other Power. 

Other occurrences belonging to the same age, as was said before, 
affected not only the diflereut nations of Christendom, but the 
whole world. It may not be possible to fix the precise date at 
which the polarity of the magnet first became known to Europeans, 
but it was probably not till the thirteenth century that the know- 
ledge was turned to a practical use by the adoption of the mag- 
netic needle in the mariner's compass : and it was in the last 
decade of the century that it bore its first tangible fruit, when 
Vasco de Gama and Columbus, by almost simultaneous efforts, 
opened to Europe the treasures of the "Western and the Eastern 
worlds. A still more momentous discovery had been made a few 
years earlier; the second half of the century had but just been 
entered upon when three Germans at Mentz produced the first 
volume (the Bible was the book which with devout propriety they 
selected for their first essay) in which the letters were not traced 
by the hand of the copyist, but stamped by types. Their pupils 
carried the art into Italy ; and, before the date which we have taken 
as the commencement of our present studies, all the choicest works 
of the gi'eat classical authors and of the most esteemed among the 
early Christian Fathers were rendered accessible to scholars of 
every country, and aroused a general spirit of study and research 
before which errors, however inveterate, and abuses, however 
favoured and protected by prejudice or interest, were destined to 
melt away. The concurrence of these circumstances of local and 
universal influence, if not in itself tantamount to a general re- 
volution, at least prepared the minds of men in every country for 
a total change of system. : and the invasions of Italy by the French 
monarchs are chiefly worthy of recollection as having given the 
first visible impulse to the new feeling ; as having originated the 
shock which with electric rapidity communicated itself to every 
nation exposed to the contact. 

Before the century of war with England which grew out of the 
marriage of Edward II. and Isabella, the creation of a predomina- 
ting influence in the north of Italy had been a leading feature in 



4: MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1485. 

tlie policj'^ of more than one French sovereign. They had con- 
stantly put themselves forward as patrons of the Guelf party, 
perhaps because the Emperors were the acknowledged heads of the 
Ghibellines : they had more than once been acknowledged as its 
protectors by the brave republic of Genoa, which had repaid 
their protection by sending well equipped squadrons and skilful 
cross-bowmen to fight in the French ranks at Sluys and Crecy ; 
and they had even had their feudal superiority acknowledged by 
some of the princes of the Piedmontese provinces. But they had 
never imagined a claim to the actual possession of any Italian 
dominions till the death of Rene, the father of our Margaret of 
Anjou, Count of Provence, and titular King of Naples, who dis- 
inherited his natural heir, and bequeathed both the estate which he 
really enjoyed, and his title, which had but a doubtful foundation 
in right, to Louis XI. Louis, however, was never inclined to risk 
a substance in order to grasp at a shadow. He seized eagerly 
enough upon Provence ; but he showed a complete indifference to 
the legacy of a pretension to Naples, which he foresaw could not 
be realised without great difficulty, and which was too completely 
separated from France to be of any value to him even if he should 
succeed in acquiring it. He was ambitious, and no man was ever 
more unscrupulous in compassing the objects of his ambition ; but . 
it is impossible to deny that the ends at which he aimed were 
desirable not only for the authority and grandeur of the king, but 
for the greatness and real welfare of the nation. Unhappily his 
son's ambition was of a more visionary character ; the idea of 
adding to his dominions a territory on which no French king had 
ever befoi*e set foot attracted his imagination ; from his boj^hood 
he had accustomed himself to study the character and exploits of 
Csesar and Charlemagne, christening his son Orlando after the 
great emperor's favourite paladin, the hero of Roncesvalles ; and 
he had dwelt on the romantic achievements of legendary heroes 
till he fancied himself qualified to emulate them by his own deeds 
of arms. Accordingly, he no sooner found himself emancipated 
from his father's tutelage, and uncontrolled master of the re- 
sources of a consolidated and powerful kingdom, than he began to 
prepare an expedition to seize by force of arms the legacy which 
the prince who had bequeathed it to his ftither had never en- 
joyed for a single moment. It was in his favour that the reigning 
King of Naples, Ferdinand of Aragon, as he was called, besides 
that, being illegitimate, he could have had no lawful right to 
succeed to any crown, was so generally detested for his arbitrarj^ 
and cruel disposition, that many of the Neapolitan nobles were 
known to be ready to join Charles or any other champion who 
might afford them a prospect of deliverance from his tyranny, 



A.n. 1194.] CHAELES VIII. INVADES ITALY. 5 

Still he felt convinced that from some quarter or other lie should 
meet with a sturdy resistance 5 and he provided for the encounter, 
by every expedient, peaceful or warlike, that he could devise. 

Yet so great was his want of wisdom that the very measures 
which he represented to himself as pacific, and calculated to 
diminish the number of his enemies, did in reality only render the 
enemy from whom he had most to apprehend more formidable. 
He was already at war with the Emperor; his relations with 
Spain were so disturbed that hostilities with that country seemed 
probable ; and to reconcile himself with both, he negotiated 
treaties with both Maximilian and Ferdinand, by which he 
restored to the one sovereign Artois and other territories of 
importance on the frontier of the Netherlands, and to the other 
the still more valuable provinces of Eousillon and Cerdagne, the 
occupation of which by the French, from the command which it 
gave them of some of the passes of the Pyrenees, was a great 
inducement to the Spaniard to avoid a war. The cession of them 
only set Ferdinand free to follow the dictates of his natural 
disposition, ever designing and ever treacherous. 

There is no political necessity more imperative on a monarch 
who contemplates engaging in war, than to acquaint himself 
accurately with the general characters and present views of neigh- 
bouring princes. Ferdinand's character was sufficiently notorious, 
and it was equally well known that he recognised the claims of 
his namesake of Naples, though illegitimate, to be considered as a 
member of his family. Yet so little was Charles able to appre- 
ciate either fact, that, as soon as he had restored the Pyrenean 
provinces, he addressed to the Spanish monarch a formal demand 
that he on his part should carry out the recent treaty by aiding 
the expedition to dethrone his kinsman, and professed the greatest 
indignation and surprise when Ferdinand replied that Naples was 
a fief of the Church, and, being such, had a claim on his aid and 
protection which no treaty with any other Power could invalidate. 
He was nowise daunted, however, or, at all events, nowise turned 
from his purpose by the discovery of the additional foe with whom 
he would have to deal, though it may be that he was led by that 
knowledge to make more extensive preparations than he would 
otherwise have considered necessary. A thousand years had 
elapsed since so mighty a force had crossed the Alps as that 
which, in the autumn of 1404, he led over Mont Genevre. In 
truth, it was irresistible by any force which the Italians could 
furnish, and unresisted, though the king whom he had at first 
designed to attack was dead, and though Alfonso his son, who had 
succeeded to the Neapolitan throne, was a prince of more warlike 
character. It is not worth while to dwell on the details of an 



6 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1495. 

expedition, wlncli at first was little else than a triumphal pro- 
cession, and subsequently was scarcely to be distinguished from an 
ignominious flight. As Charles marched southward, Florence 
received him with open arms ; Rome did not dare to refuse him 
admittance ; on the news of his approach Alfonso abdicated and 
fled, and in February 1495 he entered Naples as its master. A 
conquest so easily achieved encouraged him to plan others.; he 
began to talk of crossing the Adriatic to attack the Turk : an 
enterprise which indeed had formed part of his original design, 
and which Ferdinand the Catholic had urged him to prefer to war 
against one of the brotherhood of Christian sovereigns. But he 
thought he had earned a right first to indulge himself for a while 
in the pleasures for which the most voluptuous of capitals was 
celebrated ; and, while he accordingly devoted his hours to revelry 
and dalliance, he gave his enemies time, of which they skilfully 
availed themselves, to form a league to strip him of his conquests, 
and even to threaten his enjoyment of his hereditary dominions. 
The sovereigns whose neutrality, if not whose aid, he had expected 
to purchase by his impolitic concessions, were the chiefs of the 
confederacy. The Pope, the infamous Alexander "VI., who was a 
Spaniard by birth, eagerly entered into the confederacy, and even 
sought to quicken the zeal of his native prince by rewarding it , 
with the title of His Catholic Majesty ; Venice gave in her 
adhesion; and was followed by Milan, whose Duke, Ludovico 
Sforza, though he had formerly been earnest in his advice that 
Charles should attack Naples, was alarmed at his success ; his 
fears not being unreasonable, since the Duke of Orleans, who 
eventually succeeded Charles on the French throne, had an incon- 
testable right to Milan as the undoubted heir of the Visconti, 
and was likely to be able to assert it with effect if Charles should 
permanently establish himself as the chief potentate of Italy. By 
the end of March all the arrangements were concluded, and a 
treaty was sisned at Venice, which provided for the instant levy of 
a force, doubling the French army in amount, to bar its return to 
its own country ; and further engaged Ferdinand to invade France 
through that very province of Rousillon which Charles had so 
imprudently restored to secure the crafty Spaniard's permanent 
friendship. 

Charles had sense enough to see that he must at once retreat, 
but not judgment sufficient to decide that he must retire alto- 
gether. Half measures, proverbially dangerous, never deserve 
that character so completely as in war ; and, of all follies, that of 
dividing an army, when threatened by a superier force, is the most 
inevitably ruinous. He did not want warnings : Comines, the 
able adviser of his father, and who, as his own ambassador to 



A.D. 149o.] GOXSALVO DE CORDOVA IN ITALY. 7 

Venice, had done all that g-enius and diplomatic skill could do 
to prevent the formation of this league ugaiust his master, had 
earnestly pressed him at once to withdraw every man before 
retreat should become impossible ; but Charles could not resolve 
to relinquish his hold on Naples and the south, and determined 
to leave the Due de Montpensier in the capital as viceroy, with 
d'Aubigny, whom, though a Scotchman by birth, he had recently 
made Constable cf France, as commander of the troops. It was a 
fatal decision, though productive of one brilliant success, which 
though trivial in itself, is memorable from the deserved renown of 
the Great Captain over whom it was apparently gained. 

It was on the twentieth of May that Charles quitted Naples ; 
and we may conceive that in his heart he never expected to return 
to it, since he stripped the city of many of its works of art and 
relics of classical antiquity, which are at once the most precious 
and the most portable ; setting an example which, as if to show 
how little time has changed the character of his nation, was faith- 
fully followed by Napoleon and his Marshals in both the Italian 
and Spanish peninsulas in the revolutionary war. He did not 
depart too soon. Six days afterwards Gonsalvo de Cordova, the 
new commander-in-chief of the Spanish armies, landed in Calabria, 
with a small division of veteran troops, which he brought as a re- 
inforcement to the young king Ferdinand, in whose favour Alfonso 
had abdicated. D'Aubigny, who was in the same district, had not 
above 3,000 men at his disposal, while the Italians and Spaniards 
at least doubled that number. But the French were picked troops, 
one battalion consisting of Swiss pikemen ; while Ferdinand's 
regiments were composed of new levies, and the small body of 
infantry which Gonsalvo had brought with him he had been com- 
pelled to distribute as garrisons among the different towns through 
which he had passed. So sensible was he of the inferior quality 
of those troops who could alone be available for a battle, that he 
desired to avoid fighting ; but was overruled by Ferdinand him- 
self, whose impatience to strike a blow for his throne was further 
urged on by the fiery inconsiderateness of many of the knights 
around him, who thought of nothing but their own personal 
prowess ; and in the first week of June the two armies met at 
Seminara, a small fortified town near Reggio. It would be a 
mockery to call the action that ensued a battle. Gonsalvo's own 
tactics, being misunderstood by the bulk of his army, only ensured 
and accelerated its defeat. In their wars with the Moors the 
Spaniards had learned some of their manoeuvres, a copy, or at least 
a reproduction, of the old Parthian stratagems ; and now, when 
the French gensdannes charged in close order across a little stream 
which divided the armies, Gonsalvo wheeled his lighter-armed 



8 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1495. 

cavaliy round in a rapid retreat, hoping to disorder liis opponents 
by tlie fury of their own pursuit. But the Italians mistook the 
feigned retreat for a real flight, in which they joined with such 
alacrity, that no efforts of their commanders could retrieve the 
day. Of the whole force, it was with difficulty that Gonsalvo 
could rally a hand of 400 men, with whom to secure his retreat to 
Eeggio ; and had not d'Aubigny himself been too ill to take an 
active part in the fight, even that handful could not have escaped. 
It was the only battle that Gonsalvo ever lost ; and I have called 
it only apparently lost by him, because certainly a general ought 
not to bear the blame of a defeat when he combats only in obedi- 
ence to the orders of a superior, issued in disregard of his own 
warnings and protestations. And he abundantly retrieved it the 
next year, when, after a long and laborious campaign in which he 
never allowed his enemies to gain a single advantage over him, he 
established Ferdinand's authority over the whole of aouthern Italy, 
crowning his achievements by compelling Montpensier to a capitu- 
lation, which cleared the kingdom of every French soldier. 

And long before that time came, Charles had withdrawn from 
Italy all the forces which he had retained under his own command ; 
fortune being so far favorable to him as to gild his own retreat 
with a success as decisive as that of d'Aubigny, and more beneficial 
to his army. He had lingered so long at Naples that, by the time 
that he reached the northern frontier of Tuscany, a fortnight after 
the battle of Seminara, he found an allied army of at least three 
times his numbers ready to receive him at Fornovo, on the banks 
of the Taro ; but he and his soldiers were fighting for safety, the 
allies only for victory : Charles himself, by many a feat of personal 
bravery, showed that the example of the heroes of old, which he 
had studied so diligently, had not been lost upon him ; the Swiss, 
who composed a part of his army, proved as invincible as ever, 
demonstrating the soundness of the maxims which about the same 
time Machiavelli was impressing on his countrymen, of the supe- 
riority of infantry to cavalry as the mainstay of an army ; and after 
a combat of gi'eat fierceness for its duration (it did not last more 
than an hour), the French were completely victorious. In the 
autumn, Sforza, ever treacherous to whatever alliance he might be 
engaged in, deserted the confederacy, making a separate peace with 
Chai'les at Vercelli ; and by the beginning of November, the 
French king had repassed the Rhone, and was safe in his owi 
capital with but little thought for, and no means of succouring 
the division gradually wasting away in Calabria, before the repeated 
attacks of the great Spaniard. 

Charles died in 1498. But his death was only a signal for the 
renewal of the French attacks upon Italy, since the new king, 



A.D. 1498.] LOUIS XII. INVADES ITALY. 9 

Louis XII., formerly known as Duke of Orleans, succeeded to hia 
claims, such as they were, upon Naples, and added to them pre- 
tensions to Milan which in law and equity were undeniable, since 
he was clearly, through his grandmother, the representative and 
heir of the old ducal family of the Visconti. And he was no 
sooner master of the resources of France than he prepared to en- 
force them. As Charles had done before, he trusted to prevent 
the hostility of the sovereigns most likely to disapprove and most 
able to oppose his attempt, by treaties of alliance : hoping, too, on 
this occasion, to secure the fidelity of his allies to their engagements 
by giving them a share in his expected booty. The co-operation 
of the Venetians was secured by the treaty of Blois, which pro- 
mised them a valuable addition to their territory on the west ; 
while one, concluded a little later with Ferdinand, divided th3 
whole kingdom of Naples between France and Spain, his Catholic 
Majesty being quite willing to aid in stripping his kinsman of all 
his dominions, if he himself might be enriched by the fertile though 
distant provinces of Apulia and Calabria. But the event proved, 
as might have been expected, that such an arrangement did in fact 
only make a violation of the treaty between princes so equal in 
power and so similar in ambition more inevitable than ever. 

In the autumn of 1499, Louis, adopting the same line of march 
that had been taken by Charles, crossed the Alps by M. Genevre ; 
and had no difficulty in making himself master of the Milanese, 
or even in persuading the Swiss in Sforza's service to betray their 
master into his hands, but the whole of the next year passed by 
before he had fully settled with Ferdinand the details of the 
partition of the Neapolitan kingdom, and before the two coufe- 
derates were ready to advance on their prey. Ferdinand, of 
Naples, had died shortly after the last war; and (the fourth king 
in as many years), his uncle Frederic had succeeded to the throne, 
but it was indeed a heritage of woe. There being no Christian 
prince to whom he could look for aid, since all who were able to 
afford it were leagued far his overthrow, in the extremity of his 
distress he implored the assistance of the Turkish Sultan; and, 
when that hope failed, he made terms with the enemy whom 
he thought the most likely to show compassion for his misfortunes. 

It was a judicious policy which led him to throw himself on 
the mercy of Louis, for the French king had a natural generosity 
of disposition of which Ferdinand was destitute ; and, amid all 
his elation at having Naples thus put in his power, forbore to 
trample on a fallen foe. He assigned him the Duchy of Anjou, 
with an ample revenue, which he was too generous to withdraw 
even after he himself had been in his turn stripped of the dominion 
which he seemed to have secured ; for, brief as Frederic's life in 



/ 



10 MODERN HISTORY. La.d. 1502. 

France "was, it was protracted long enough to see his despoilers 
arrayed in arms against each other. In the partition, Louis was 
to have the northern portion of the kingdom, with the capital, 
and. the title of King of Naples ; the southern provinces were 
assigned to Ferdinand. And so little did it seem possible that any 
effective opposition should be offered to the arms of either, that 
Gonsalvo, who again was the commander-in-chief of the Spaniards, 
passed on first to the Morea, to aid the Venetians against the 
Sultan. By the capture of a fortress previously believed to be 
impregnable, he drove the Turks out of Cefalonia, inflicting upon 
Bajazet the first check in his career of conquest that his arms had 
ever sustained ; and it was not till Gonsalvo had thus enabled the 
Venetians to continue the war in which they were engaged with 
hiin on equal terms that he turned back to take possession of 
Calabria for his own sovereign. He met with a resistance which 
he did not expect at Taranto, which a body of nobles, who had 
Frederic's son, the youthful Duke of Calabria, under their charge, 
maintained against him with a resolution which he was unable 'to 
subdue, till he bethought him of an expedient adopted against the 
same city by Hannibal in the Punic wars, and carried a number 
of his smaller vessels over a neck of land to a piece of water 
which washed the walls at a point where, as they seemed in- 
accessible, they had been left unfortified. When Taranto fell, the 
subjugation of the whole kingdom was completed ; but the time, 
which the Spaniards had lost in reducing it had been taken 
advantage of by the French to appropriate some of the central 
districts which, (so great was the carelessness or the ignorance 
which had presided over the delineation of the boundaries of 
their respective shores) each nation claimed as its own. Gonsalvo 
was not long in pouring forces into the same district. Warm 
remonstrances and protests were interchanged ; till at last, at 
Midsummer 1502, Louis, having the advantage of assuming the 
tone of an injured party, declared war against Ferdinand, as the 
sole way of preventing his further encroachments. The armies 
on both sides were ridiculously small to have the fortunes of such 
mighty nations entrusted to them. Louis' generals, the Due de 
Nemours and d'Aubigny, had not 10,000 men of all arms around 
their standards, while their artillery consisted of four cannons 
(it was in these wars that the large field-guns were first spoken 
of by this name) and twenty-two smaller pieces ; while Gonsalvo's 
force was smaller in number, and still more inferior in equipment. - 

Again, the war was brief, and illustrated by only two battles 
which deserve the name, in which both armies exhibited in 
striking contrast the qualities which have ever been characteristic 
of each nation. The French were fiery and well-nigh irresistible 



A.D. 1502.] ' SUBMISSION OF NAPLES. 11 

in their first onset or when flushed with success, but fretful under 
the restraints of discipline, and still more impatient of reverses 
or even of checks. The Spaniards were persevering in exertion, 
stubborn in endurance ; proving their confidence in their leader by 
the most implicit obedience to his orders, even while he was 
showing his disregard to their prejudices by reorgauising his 
battalions on a system wholly unlike any that had previously 
been seen in a Spanish arm}', and substituting for the light 
cavalry (which had decided many a field in the Moorish wars, 
but which were wholly imable to contend with the powerful 
men-at-arms of France) whole masses of infantiy, variously 
armed, so that some battalions should be available for rapid 
charges, others impenetrable in their defensive power. 

The first battle was fought on classic ground. A few miles from 
Cannae, where the great Carthaginian dealt the deadliest of his 
Mows on the legions of Rome, the little town of Cerignola crowns 
a hill, on which Gonsalvo, hearing that Nemours was marching 
to attack him, hastily threw up some entrenchments, which, by 
the time that the French came in sight, presented so formidable 
an appearance that the duke would have deferred attacking it till 
the next morning, when his men, now wearied by a march under 
an Italian sun, might have rested, and he himself might have had 
leisure to examine the strength of the enemy's position ; but a 
fatal want of discipline, which prevailed among the superior 
officers even more than in the ranks, overruled this prudent 
intention, one of tha French knights, d'Alegre, a warrior of high 
reputation for personal prowess, venturing even to insinuate that 
the commander-in-chief's proposal had in it at least as much 
timidity as skill. Nemours could not dare to chastise his insolent 
officer, but was stung by the taunt into replying with another, 
which proved better founded : ' We will fight them this evening,' 
said he, ' when the boasters will be found perhaps to trust more 
to their spurs than to their swords ; ' and he at once formed his 
men in order of battle, and led them to the charge. His pre- 
diction was verified. So admirable was the discipline into which 
Gonsalvo had brought his men that, though an accidental shot 
from the enemy's battery blew up their powder-waggons, they 
kept their ranks undismayed, while the French were panic-stricken 
at the loss of Nemours, who were killed by a musket-ball. They 
halted, they wavered ; and the moment that Gonsalvo, seeing 
their confusion, moved out of his entrenchments to attack them, 
the whole of their cavalry fled without striking a blow. 

The victory was followed by the submission of Naples, which 
opened its gates to the conqueror ; indeed the city itself had no 
means of resistance, and the two fortresses which are its only pro- 



12 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1503. 

tection, the Castles Uovo and Nuovo, were unable long to bold 
out against tbft new mode of attack by wbicb tbey were assailed. 
During the war against the Moors, a Spanish artillery officer, 
named Ramirez, had invented mines ; and now another engineer, 
I'edro Navarro, improved so much upon his invention that he left 
little more to be done beyond a development and expansion of the 
principles of the construction of such works as he laid them down. 
Under his energetic and skilful superin ten dance a single week 
sufficed to undermine the strongest of the foi'ts. The reduction of 
the others soon followed. Gonsalvo lost no time, but, driving the 
French step by step before him, before the end of the autumn he 
had subdued the whole kingdom, with the exception of Venosa, the 
birthplace of Horace, and the strong coast fortress of Gaeta, which 
still preserves the name of the nurse of ^neas, and which was so 
strongly situated that he found all his means inadequate to the 
assault of it, and was forced to content himself with a distant 
blockade. And even Gaeta fell before the close of the year, 
though Louis made great efforts to succour it, as affording the 
only hope left to him of recovering his hold on the kingdom. But 
his exertions only made his final discomfiture the more signal, 
counteracted as they were by the degree in which he was presently 
led to subordinate his military plans to political considerations. 
He had collected a splendid body of Swiss infantry j the flower 
of the French nobles headed a magnificent battalion of cavalry ; 
they were supported by a train of artillery, the most powerful 
that as yet had ever accompanied an army to the field ; and he 
placed the whole under the command of the Marshal de la Tre- 
mouille, the ancestor of the Lady Derby, immortalised in our own 
history by the defence of Latham House. All that seemed need- 
ful to ensure his triumph was promptitude of action ; but, while 
the army was on its march, Pope Alexander died, De la Tremou- 
ille, by his express orders, halted for almost a month near Rome, 
in the hope of procuring the election of a French cardinal as his 
successor, and before he was allowed to resume his march, was 
taken so ill as to be forced to resign his command. He was re- 
placed by the Marquis of JMantua, who after a time gave up his 
post to the Marquis of Saluzzo : both soldiers of experience, not 
deficient in courage, but of very moderate skill, and utterly unfit 
to cope with the Great Captain, as Gonsalvo was deservedly en- 
titled. That commander had pushed his way to the Garigliano, 
the silent Liris^ of Horace, the old boundary of Campania ; look- 
ing on its deep stream as affording him a position strong enough 

^ rura quae Liris qniefS. 

Mordet aqua, taciturnus amnif. 

Hor. Carm. I. 31. 8. 



A.D. 1504.] TREATY OF LYONS. 13 

to be maintained even against the powerful army wliich lie knew 
to be approaching. His foresight was justified by the result. 
Though greatly inferior in numbers, he kept the French at bay for 
above two months ; and, at last, having procured a reinforcement 
of Roman troops imder d'Alviano, a warrior animated with more 
of the old Roman spirit than was to be found in the generality of 
his countrymen, and thus having placed himself on something 
like an equality with his foes in point of numbers, in the last week 
of the year he took advantage of a dark night, to throw a bridge 
over the river and attack Saluzzo on his own side of the stream. 
French troops have not usually been good at recovering from sur- 
prises ; but on this occasion they made a stout resistance under the 
most disadvantageous circumstances. Saluzzo himself never lost 
his presence of mind ; and the French nobles, headed by the cele- 
brated Bayard, who never showed himself more worthy of his 
renown than on this day, with desperate energy rallied their 
columns, and did all that the most fiery courage could attempt to 
arrest the disaster. But no efforts of theirs, however gallant, 
could counterbalance Gonsalvo's superiority of skill. Presentlj'^, 
another division of the Spaniards crossed the river lower down, 
and the French, thus placed, as it were, between two fires, and 
utterly disheartened by this fresh attack, at last gave way in every 
direction ; the battle became a rout : Gaeta, which surrendered 
the next day, was only the firstfruits of the victory. And Louis, 
alarmed for the safety of even his acquisitions in the Milanese, in 
February 1504 signed a treaty with Ferdinand, by which he re- 
nounced all claim to any part of the Neapolitan territories. 

Yet an episode in or after the war showed what French soldier.s, 
when fitly led, were capable of effecting, under the most disad- 
vantageous circumstances. Louis d'Ars was one of those knights 
who had fulfilled the warning of the Due de Nemours, by flying 
ingloriously from the field of Cerignola. But he had yielded to a 
momentary panic, and burnt, with a gallant resolution to retrieve 
his fame. He had thrown himself, with a few hundred men-at- 
arms, into Venosa, a town celebrated to the latest ages as the 
birthplace of Horace, and, by its situation at the foot of a 
mountain chain, a place of some strength. He held it against all 
attacks till the Treaty of Lj^ons put an end to the war ; when the 
gallantry which he had displayed extracted from Gonsalvo, who 
knew how to honour courage even in an enemy, as singular terms 
of congratulation as any one heard. To borrow the description of 
Brantome, whose pen is never so vivid as when describing some 
knight-like exploit, 'lance on thigh, and in complete armour, he 
and his little band traversed the kingdom of Naples, and the whole 
of Italy, in all the array of war, living at free quarters all aloiii^ 



14 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.u. 1508. 

their line of niarcli ; and thus he saA'ed both the lives and the 
honour of himself and all his comrades, their personal decorations 
and jewels, and even the booty which they had gained ; and so, 
with the admiration of all men, they reached Blois, and paid their 
respects to the king, their master, and to the queen, their mistress.' 

But the Treaty of Lyons was an armistice rather than a truce. 
Unhappy Italy, as one of her sweetest poets complains, with 
beauty sufficient ever to invite attack, was destitute of strength to 
defend herself; ^ and throughout the age of which we are speak- 
ing, and for many succeeding generations, was looked wpon by all 
her neighbours as fit object for all the worst intrigues of ambition 
and covetousness. It was natural that Louis should feel that he 
had lost some credit by the result of the late war ; but it argued 
a strange simplicity, that he should seek to retrieve his honour by 
a fresh alliance of partition with the very prince with whom his 
last treaty of the kind had involved him in so disastrous a contest. 
Yet, as he had before made a league with Ferdinand for the 
spoliation of the king of Naples, &c., in 1508 he concluded one, 
known from the time at which it was signed as the League of 
Cambrai, with Ferdinand, Maximilian, and Pope Julius II., to 
deprive Venice of all the towns and territories which that proud 
republic had gained during the former war, partly as the price of 
her neutrality and partly in payment for great loans which she 
had advanced to the conqueror. 

Each successive war was commenced on a larger scale than that 
which preceded it ; the Venetians, remembering the force which 
Louis liad led into Italy ten years before, collected for their de- 
fence the most numerous host that had for ages been seen on 
their side of the Alps ; under the same d'Alviano, whose vigorous 
counsels had greatly contributed to Gonsalvo's triumph on the 
Garigliano, while the army of Louis, though not equal to it in 
numbers, supplied that deficiency by the perfection of its discip- 
line and the completeness of its equipment. He was his own 
general, with the Marshal Trivulzio for his second in command ; 
and, though he was not as yet joined by any of the allies on 
whose support he had reckoned, fortune was on his side, and more 
than made up for their absence. At a place called Agnadello on 
the Adda, as the Venetians were marching along the river in two 

* Deh fossi tu men bella, o almen piu- forte, 
Onde assai piii ti paventasse, o assai 
T' amasse men chi del tuo bello ai rai 
Par che si strugga, e pur ti stida a morte ! 



Nfe te vedrei, del non tuo ferro cinta, 
Pugnar col braccio di .straniere genti, 
Per servir sempre, o vincitrice o vinta. 

Filicaja, All' Italia. Sonetto I. 



A.D. 1511.] THE HOLY LEAGUE. 15 

divisions, he fell on tlie rearmost division, wliicli was commanded 
by d'Alviano himself. From some misunderstanding or other, the 
leading battalions could not be brought back to d'Alviano's support, 
and he was left with half his force to resist as he might the 
attack of the whole French army encouraged by the presence of 
their king. The contest was too unequal : his division was com- 
pletely defeated, he himself being taken prisoner ; and Venice 
had no resource but to submit for a time, and to trust to her 
political and diplomatic address to regain what she had lost by 
arms. 

No doubt the wily statesmen who administered her govern- 
ment foresaw that they should not have long to wait. However 
divided on other subjects, all Italian States agreed in looking on 
the French as foreigners, if not barbarians. Ferdinand, in virtue 
of liis possession of Naples, looked on himself as an Italian prince ; 
and when Pope Julius began to plan a new confederacy to expel 
the French from Italy, and when Louis, having accurate in- 
formation of his designs, anticipated his enmity by invading the 
Papal States, and occupying Bologna, His Catholic Majesty again 
found out that his duty to the Head of the Church was paramount 
to any obligation to his ally ; and in the autumn of 1511 entered 
into a fresh alliance with Julius and Venice, which the Pope 
honoured w'ith the title of the Holy Lengue, and the avowed 
object of which was the expulsion from Italy of the very king 
whom, three years before, two of the three confederates had en- 
gaged to aid in invading that country. They were nearly having 
:ause to repent their perfidy. Louis, the moment that his sus- 
picions were aroused, had begun to strengthen his arnij'-, and 
resigned the command of it to a new leader, only twenty-two 
years of age, but endowed by nature with such rare talents for 
war that he was a consummate general before he had served a 
single campaign. His name was Gaston de Foix, and he was 
nearly related to both the hostile sovereigns. His sister was 
Ferdinand's second wife ; and he was the nephew of Louis, who 
had conferred on him the Duchy of Nemours, vacant by the death 
of the former duke at Cerignola. In the first week of 1512, 
Gaston assumed the command ; and during the short time that he 
was spared to hold it, it was a succession of triumphs, all well 
deserved by the rigorous discipline with which he repressed dis- 
orders of the camp, and by the unprecedented rapidity and vigour 
of all his operations. In ancient times Csesar, but perliaps 
Cpesar alone, had perceived that, of all the means of success, 
celerity of movement is the most essential and the most unfailing. 
In very recent days Napoleon owed the most brilliant of his 
triumpiis to the same principle ; but Gaston de Foix seems 



16 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1512. 

fairly entitled to the praise of being the first general of modern 
history who acknowledged it and proved its soundness by his own 
practice. When he reached Milan to take the command, he leamt 
that a Spanish army was besieging the garrison which the king 
had left in Bologna, and was in daily expectation of compelling it 
to surrender. He at once hastened to relieve it. The winter was 
one of unusual severity. The roads were deep in snow; yet in 
less than a fortnight he came in. sight of the besieged city, whose 
assailants retired at his approach. Before the end of the month 
he turned the tables on them, retracing his steps, and attacking 
and capturing Brescia ; having first defeated a large Venetian 
army which was encamped under its walls ; and at the beginning 
of April he once more moved southward to attack the Spaniards, 
who, under Cardona, the Viceroy of Naples, were endeavouring 
to justify the plea which their king had advanced for turning 
against Louis, by occupying, as the champion of the Pope, those 
provinces of the States of the Church which were most exposed to 
the French power. He came up with them at Ravenna, at once 
attacked them, and, after the most sternly contested and most 
blood}' battle that had yet been fought on Italian soil, the Spaniards 
were utterly defeated ; but Gaston did not live to be conscious of 
his victory. He had been gallantly seconded by Bayard, and by 
d'Alegre, who now nobly retrieved the honour which he had 
stained at Cerignola, while Cardona was supported with equal 
skill and courage by Navarro, who had the principal body of the 
Spanish infantry entrusted to his direction. As if to throw a 
doubt on the theory of those who maintained the superiority of 
infantry to cavalry as the chief force of an army, the defeat of the 
Spaniards was achieved by the French heavy cavalry, led on with 
irresistible valour by d'Alegre ; but still a brigade of 4,000 infantry 
under Navarro kept their ranks unbroken, and, after the rest of the 
army was in-etrievably broken, was returning in good order, when 
Gaston, thinking the victory but half gained if so powerful a force 
were allowed to escape unmolested, himself headed a furious 
cavalry charge against it. It would, have been better had he 
allowed them to continue their retreat, even if, according to the 
proverb, he had had to make a bridge of gold for a flying enemy. 
They received his outset with a steady fire. His horse fell under 
him, pierced with many balls, and before his owq men could save 
or his enemies could recognise him he was killed ; all his wounds 
being received in front, good proof, as Brantome boasts, that the 
gentle prince had never turned his back. 

The victory was complete : the number of slain among the 
Spaniards doubled that of the French dead ; while Carduna him- 
self, and Cardinal John de' iNFedici, soon to be known as Pope 



A.D. 1512.J BATTLE OF EAVENNA. 17 

Leo X., were amoug the prisoners. But the very confidence with 
which Gaston had inspired his followers now proved injurious by 
the corresponding dismay with which his loss afflicted them. The 
French army was still the stronger, and there were still able 
leaders left : but the troops had lost heart ; the generals, unable 
to rely on them, fell back. The garrisons, which they left in 
different towers and fortresses, were cut off and compelled to sur- 
render, and in a few months the whole army was reduced to 
evacuate Italy, Louis's attention being diverted from that country 
to the defence of his own dominions, which were now threatened 
in the north by Henry VIIL of England and Maximilian, and 
were for a moment laid almost at their mercy by the extraordi- 
nary rout of his army at Guinegatte. But flenry was too fickle 
and Maximilian too poor to persevere in a war in which neither 
had any solid object to gain. In the spring of 1513, the most 
warlike of all the enemies of France, Pope Julius, died, and was 
succeeded by the Cardinal de' Medici, who had been taken prisoner 
at Ravenna, and whom that misfortune had been quite sufficient 
to render averse to war. In the autumn negotiations were set on 
foot ; after a few months a general peace was concluded, which 
seemed the more likely to last, that it was followed at no distant 
time by the death of the sovereigns to whose ambition, faithless- 
ness, and it may perhaps be said, personal enmity, all tlie recent 
interruptions of peace had been owing. Louis died on New 
Year's Bay, 1515. Ferdinand died in the same month of the next 
year ; and three years afterwards, as if January were destined to 
be equally fatal to all the belligerents, Maximilian also died, leav- 
ing the Empire to be contended for by the heirs of both Ferdinand 
and Louis; and perhaps to prove a potent, though imavowed, 
cause of the renewal of hostilities between the two nations on the 
old battle-field of Italy. 

Of the first in rank of the three princes whose deaths followed 
one another so closely, the Emperor Maximilian, it is hardly 
necessary to say much. He was reputed to have considerable 
military skill ; but the impoverished state of the Empire prevented 
his engaging in any warlike enterprise, except as an ally of some 
other monarch, or following out any political scheme with steadi- 
ness and consistency. But the Kings of France and Spain require 
more particular comment. Perhaps no country has had so few 
rulers who can be spoken of in any terms save those of the most 
decided reprobation as France. The miseries through which it is 
passingatthis moment are but the consequence of the demoralisation 
diffused tiirough the whole nation by a long succession of worth- 
less sovereigns. But Louis XII. is honorably distinguished from 
most of those bv whom he is surrounded. Before he came to the 



18 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1515. 

throne he had many enemies, for the hatred which Louis XI. bore 
him was no secret ; and, after the death of her son, which left him 
heir to the throne, Charles's queen, Anne of Brittany, regarded 
him with a jealous aversion ; while in both reigns the courtiers 
naturally took part against one who was out of favour with the 
sovereign. But on his accession Louis frankly forgave all the in- 
juries which had been done to him; and his expression, that 'it 
did not become the King of France to avenge the wrongs of the 
Duke of Orleans,' evinced a genuine magnanimity such as animates 
but few of those who have power to avenge themselves. He at 
all times professed and apparently felt a lively interest in the com- 
fort and welfare of his subjects, and they acknowledged his affec- 
tionate anxiety by the titles of ' The good King,' ' The Father of 
his People.' Li another point, too, he set an example to succeed- 
ings kings, which had all the merit of novelty, and which, if it 
had been followed, would have conferred a permanent benefit on 
the nation. Dissoluteness of manners had long been more pre- 
valent in the French court than in any other. The death of 
Charles VIIL had been mainly caused by his excesses ; but Louis 
neither allowed himself any license, nor countenanced profanity in 
others ; if vice could not be entirely banished from the court in a 
single short reign, it was compelled at last to conceal itself, and 
the concealment was not only a homage but an aid to virtue. He 
was amply endued with personal courage, and not deficient in 
military skill ; indeed, his chief fault as a king was a fondness for 
war, for which it is some excuse that his claim to the Duchy of 
Milan was entirely well founded. It is less easy to excuse his 
simplicity as a statesman, when he trusted to an alliance with 
Ferdinand, who had turned against him once, and was certain to 
deceive him again. He cannot, indeed, be called a great or a wise 
king ; but he is certainly entitled to the praise of having been a 
virtuous and amiable man. 

No man could resemble him less than his rival Ferdinand. 
While Louis was forgiving to his enemies, Ferdinand was un- 
grateful to his friends and most faithful servants : to such orna- 
ments of his age and of his country as Columbus, and Gonsalvo, 
and Ximenes. He was bigoted without being religious ; and his 
faithlessness to all who trusted him was almost proverbial. Ma- 
chiavelli, who was his contemporary, had affirmed that ' a prudent 
prince would not, and ought not, to observe his engagements when 
they would operate to his disadvantage, and if the motives no 
longer existed which induced him to enter into them/ and no pupil 
ever carried out a master's precepts as steadily as Ferdinand in 
this point. If not timid, he had certainly none of that fiery courage 
which was the characteristic of so many of his subjects : though 



A.T). 151 o.] CHAEACTER OF FEEDIFAND. 19 

frequently engaged in -war, lie always pi'eferred compassing his 
ends by negotiation ; and it must be confessed that so sagaciously 
did he time and conduct his operation's of both kinds that, during 
his reign, Spain greatly increased in power and prosperity. How 
great a portion of the benefits his country derived from his reign 
should in fairness be ascribed to his wife, the Queen of Castile, it 
is not easy to determine with accuracy. Unquestionably it was 
to her rather than to him that Columbus was indebted for the 
patronage which enabled him to realise his own noble aspirations, to 
the accomplishment of which the nation was indebted so largely 
for its chief successes during the next century. It is believed also 
to have been to her that the country was indebted for the discern- 
ment of the rare abilities of the Great Captain. But it is probable 
that her more cordial temper and more affable manners often in- 
duced people to give ber the credit of measures which were really 
dictated by her husband's sagacity, a sagacity which, it must be 
added, rarely needed a monitor. Ferdinand had one quality, 
frugality, which is so rarely practised by princes that it deserves 
in them to be accounted a virtue; but, like his contemporary 
Henry VII., he carried it so far as often to allow it to degenerate 
into meanness. Machiavelli who brands him as a miser, yet extols 
him on the whole as one who, ' beginning as a feeble prince, made 
himself the most renowned and glorious monarch of Christendom.' 
His countrymen generally, especially those of his native kingdom 
of Aragon, exulted in and lamented him for the same reason. 
And, if we look at his achievements and the condition in which he 
left his kingdom, than which few tests of a ruler's merit are less 
liable to suspicion, we must admit that, if very far from being an 
amiable man, he very nearly deserves the praise of a great king.^ 

' The authorities for the preced- Martin, Guicciardini's Istoria d'Jl- 
ing chapter are the different Histories alia, Brantome's Memoirs, Prescott's 
of France, especially Sisinondi and Ferdinand and Isabella, &c. 




20 MODEEN HISTOKY. [a.d. 1490. 



CHAPTER II. 
A.D. 1490 — 1547. 

LOUIS was succeeded by a distant cousin, Francis, Count d'An- 
gouleme, and Ferdinand by his grandson Charles, the son of 
his only daughter Joanna, and the archduke Philip son of Maxi- 
milian, -who had died when his son was only six years old. Charles 
survived Francis by some years, and, during almost the whole of 
his reign, and indeed for nearly a century afterwards, the two 
Powers were constantly at war : while, even at and before Charles's 
accession, events were in rapid progress that soon placed resources 
for war at the command of Spain which were shared by no other 
nation, and which, had it not been for the diversion afforded by 
the revolt of the Netherlands, and the war with England, would 
in all probability have laid France at her feet. Before, therefore, 
we resume the history of these wars, it will be as well to cross the 
Atlantic ; and for a brief period to direct our attention to achieve- 
ments the most astonishing and the most momentous of that age, 
which in regions, of which the very existence was previously mi- 
suspected, suddenly gave the kings of Spain territories both in 
extent and riches far surpassing their hereditary dominions. 

It seems something like a mere freak of fortune which confeiTed 
the gift upon them; for the great man to whose discoveries they 
were in the first instance indebted for it was no native of Spain, 
nor, if others had listened favorably to his proposals, would he 
ever have brought them to the Spanish Court, Christopher 
Columbus, the greatest name in the annals of maritime discovery, 
was a Genoese by birth, and received his education at a school at 
Pavia, where he was distinguished among his fellow-students for 
his proficiency in mathematics. His parents, however, were poor, 
so that as he gi'ew up he had to trust to his own earnings for his 
support, and chose the profession of a sailor, in which no nation in 
the world could at that time vie with his countrymen. But, as he 
advanced towards middle age, he became ambitious of a wider 
field for exertion than could be afforded to, and of a wider renown 
than could be achieved by, the captain of a single trading-vessel. 
As far back as the beginning of the fifteenth century, if not earlier, 



A.D. U90.] COLUMBUS, 21 

a notion can be traced that the western shores of Europe were not 
the boundaries of the world in that direction. The celebrated 
Pulci, who was not many years older than Columbus, had given 
currency to the general belief in his ' Morgante Maggiore/ ventur- 
ing even on a prophecy of dangerous precision, but one which was 
accomplished with singular minuteness, that vessels passing beyond 
the Pillars of Hercules would reach another hemisphere, where 
they would find empires of ancient establishment, and populous 
cities, old, but undreamt of by Europeans. Columbus had caught 
at and dwelt upon the idea ; which grew almost into conviction 
when a friend, who had addicted himself to geographical studies, 
presented him with a chart of the world which he had delineated, 
and on which he had represented the eastern coast of Asia as con- 
fronting the western coast of Europe, Of what character or extent 
the countries might be which lay between the two, Toscanelli, for 
that was the geographer's name, did not venture to conjecture ; 
but, vague as the ideas of either of them must have been of the 
distance between the two continents, he and his friend agreed in 
supposing that land must exist in the expanse of ocean, and in tlie 
discovery of it Columbus saw a prospect of the fame for which he 
was panting. 

He first proposed the enterprise to the King of Portugal ; but 
John II., though fully appreciating the importance of the object 
aimed at, was already engaged in promoting the expedition which 
sought a passage to Asia by the south, and whose leaders immor- 
talised themselves by reaching and doubling the lofty promontory 
into which Africa tapers in that du-ection, the Cape of Good Hope, 
as it was named by the king himself, who was far from suspecting 
that it was another nation, and not his own, that was to reap the 
benefit fi'om his sailor's success. 

From Portugal Columbus passed into Spain ; but Ferdinand and 
Isabella were too fully occupied with the Moorish war to give 
their personal attention to his petition for their countenance to his 
enterprise. They referred him to a council of pedants and 
ecclesiastics, who, after months of consideration or neglect, re- 
ported his scheme to be vain and impracticable. And, rejected by 
them, he turned to Henry VII., whom, a couple of years before, 
the Battle of Bosworth had seated on the throne of England, and 
who had already established a character for farsighted sagacity. 
Had he gone himself to the English Court his discoveries would 
have been made in the service of England ; but his brother, whom 
he sent to London as his agent, when returning to Spain with an 
answer full of encouragement, and an invitation to Columbus 
himself to repair to England, was captured by pirates; and, as his 
misfortune was unknown in Spain, Columbus was left in ignorance 



22 MODERN HISTORY. U-d. 1492. 

of the reception lie had met witli. Meantime, his friends had been 
unwearied in pressing upon the Spanish sovereigns the probable 
soundness of his calculations, the vastness of the prize to be ob- 
tained if they should be realised, and the peculiar fitness of the 
man himself to conduct an expedition with such an object to a 
successful issue, till at last they prevailed, not indeed on Ferdinand, 
but on Isabella, who, though the two kingdoms were united, yet 
governed her hereditar}"^ dominion of Castile with independent 
authority; and who undertook to provide the expense of the enter- 
prise out of the Castilian revenues. A curious agreement was 
entered into, which establisbed a sort of partnership between the 
Crown and Columbus in the risks and possible profits of the 
undertaking, and which even gave him a voice in the appointment 
of deputy-governor to the territories which he might discover. 
The supreme power was of course resei-ved to the Crown ; under 
which he himself was to exercise an authority but little inferior. 
He was to be admiral of all the seas ; governor-general of all the 
islands and continents which he might discover ; and these offices 
and dignities were already made hereditary in his family. It was 
a strange accumulation of honours to be earned by projects and 
promises which, it must be admitted, were all that Columbus 
had as yet produced ; but governments such as that of Spain 
are apt to rush from the extreme of suspicion to the extreme of 
confidence. 

However, the sanguine view the princes were now inclined to 
take of his scheme was not shared by their subjects. It was not 
without great difficulty that Columbus procured volunteers enough 
to man three small vessels. But at last he overcame all difficulties, 
or made light of those which he could not surmount. And on the 
third of August 1492, with the ' Santa Maria,' commanded by him- 
self, the ' Pinta ' and the * Nina,' two caravels or undecked boats, 
commanded by two brothers named Pinzon, the crews of the three 
amounting to no more than 120 men, he set sail from Palos, 
and bent his way across an ocean which, so far as he knew, no 
keel laid by mortal man had ever traversed. His difficulties began 
from the first moment he left the harbour. One ship lost her 
rudder, and after a day or two the whole squadron was found to be 
so crazy that he was forced to spend many days at the Canaries in 
making them seaworthy. After he left the Canaries, he had still 
greater troubles to contend with in the fears of his men, unused to 
sail on day after day without seeiug the land, and growing the 
more helpless and hopeless the more they had time to reflect on 
their novel situation. 

It was not long before a real cause of perplexity was added to 
their visionary fears. The pilot discovered not only that the 



A.D. 1492.J DIFFICULTIES OF HIS VOYAGE. 23 

needle did not, as liad been supposed, point directly to the north, 
but that the farther thej"^ proceeded, the greater became the 
variation. Columbus explained it by affirming that it was the 
polar star itself which moved as it revolved round the pole ; but, 
though none of his comrades could disprove his theorj'', a secret 
doubt of its correctness increased their discontent. Appearances, 
too, which when first seen were supposed to indicate the proximity 
of land, such as the gathering of birds round the squadron, and 
masses of seaweed floating on the waves, proved illusory, the 
latter being speedily converted into a new ground of fear, since 
they were imagined to prove that the ships were approaching the 
very boundaries of the navigable ocean, though in that case what 
was to be met with but land no one condescended to explain. 
More than once too the look-out men had affirmed that they saw 
land from the masthead, which presently proved to be nothing 
more than clouds ; and each disappointment only aggravated the 
vexation of the crews, and excited their anger against their leader, 
whom they looked upon as its cause. Perhaps their feelings and 
conduct were not very different from those of other men in 
entirely novel situations. They are not the first, and will not be 
the last, who base their terrors on facts calculated to afford 
encouragement, and build their hopes on fallacies. So unreasoning 
was their discontent that some turbulent spirits even conspired 
against Columbus himself, though manifestly the man who, if 
they really were in danger, was the most able to extricate them 
from it. Unluckily, of men of mutinous and fierce dispositions 
there were too many on board, for no small portion of his crews 
had been tempted to follow him by the pardon of their crimes, or 
the withdrawal of prosecutions which they had reason to dread. 
Still amid all these trials Columbus never faltered in his purpose ; 
he lost neither courage nor temper. To the w«ll-meaning, who 
were only timid, he addressed conciliatory argument ; others he 
cowed with stern reproof, and even with menace : to all he 
expressed his imalterable determination to persevere in his enter- 
prise, as being the only course compatible with his duty to the 
sovereigns who had placed such trust in his calculations and 
proposals. 

At last his perseverance was rewarded ; and his speculations 
were, in one point of view, verified with a curious precision by the 
event which, in another, proved them to have been completely 
erroneous. Two hixndred years before, Marco Polo, a Venetian 
traveller, had spoken of a great island, Cipango, the modern 
Japan, as lying between Europe and India or Cathay, as he called 
China ; and more than one student of geography had formed hia 
estimate of the distances, from a comparison of which Columbus 



24 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1-192. 

from the first had reckoned that Cipango was little more than 
2,000 miles west of Lisbon. So confident was he of the correctness 
of that calculation that on the eleventh of October, finding that he 
had now gone that distance, he issued orders that the ships should 
furl their sails at midnight, and for the future should only prosecute 
their voyage by daylight ; and he himself took his post on the 
poop to watch for the first sight of land. That very evening he 
saw a light at a distance, such as could only proceed from men ; 
and the next morning before daybreak a low well- wooded coast 
was plainly visible. He had accomplished his object j he had 
found land on the western side of the great ocean ! In reality he 
had done far more than he had proposed to do. In seeking a 
shorter road to countries long known, he had discovered a new 
world. But it was some time before this was suspected. The 
land which he had then reached was one of the cluster of islands 
now known as the Bahamas, to which, in his gratitude to God 
who had guided him so far in safety, he gave the name of San 
Salvador.^ To land and take possession of the country, the extent 
of which was as yet of course unknoAvn to him, with all due 
formalities in the name of the Spanish sovereigns, was the first 
task. The natives offered no opposition ; they fancied, indeed, 
that the sails of the ships (they had no boats themselves, but such 
as were impelled by oars) were wings on which the vessels had 
descended from the sky, and the Spaniards, with their fairer 
complexions and glittering armour (their own skins were tawny, 
and had no covering but paint of various colours), they looked 
upon as beings of a superior order of creation. Columbus soon 
perceived that they were destitute of civilisation to an extent of 
which he had formed no conception, and also that their island was 
rocky and poor ; but a few of them wore gold trinkets, and as gold 
had been the attraction by which the main body of his followers 
had been persuaded to join him, he enquired of them eagerly 
where those precious ornaments had been procured. They answered 
by signs that they were the produce of the south, and accordingly, 
after tarrying a day or two to recruit his stores of wood and water, 
he weighed anchor and set sail in that direction. After touching 
at one or two more islands, before the end of the month he reached 
Cuba, whose beauty and fertility convinced him that this was the 
Cipango which he was seeking ; the gaudy plumage of the birds, 

1 Some -writers have recently con- tains the claims of San Salvador, 

tended that Watling's Island, a allows that the light seen on the 

smaller island lying a few miles to previous evening may have come 

the east of San Salvador, is entitled from Watling, close "to which the 

to the honour of having been that on navigators must have passed. It is a 

which the white men first landed, matter of no consequence, and impos- 

and Washington Irving, who main- Bilile to be determinsd with certainty 



x.n. 1492.] HE REACHES HAYTI. 25 

the fragrance of the aromatic woods, ahove all the pearl-bearing 
oyster with which the coasts abounded, were all identified in his 
mind with India, so that he never doubted his correctness in 
giving that generic name to all the lands he discovered : a name 
which the subsequent ascertainment of his errors has not been 
allowed to do more than modify, and the appellation of the West 
Indies still preserves the memory of the belief which led their 
great discoverer to their shores. 

The natives of Cuba were far more civilised than those of San 
Salvador, they were also richer ; but, as on all occasions, Columbus 
prosecuted his enquiries for gold, he collected from their answers 
that it was from a country still more to the southward that that 
metal was to be procured; and once more he set sail in the 
direction thus pointed out, taking with him several of the islanders 
as interpreters. After a few days he reached Hayti, which seemed 
a still more desirable acquisition than Cuba. The natives appeared 
to be of a higher stamp ; they had also far more gold, and were 
equally liberal of it, so that, in changing its name, a liberty which 
he allowed himself in every place, he called it Little Spain or 
Ilispaniola, being still under the delusion that he had arrived in 
the regions of India, and flattering himself that he had now 
reached the Ophir which had poured forth its treasures to enable 
Solomon to decorate the Temple. 

But severe vexations awaited him. The elder Pinzon, captain of 
the second vessel, the ' Pinta,' a man of a covetous and treacherous 
disposition, deserted him, hoping to make some discovery by 
himself, or perhaps, by returning to Spain, to rob him of some 
portion of bis credit by being the first to announce to his country- 
men at home what had been accomplished. But whatever was 
his purpose, it was baffled, for he lost his way among the numerous 
islands with which those seas abound ; and, a few weeks after- 
wards, was glad to fall in again with his commander as he was 
setting out on his return to Europe. A calamity of a still more 
serious character was the loss of the flagship, the ' Santa Maria,' 
which, shortly after the desertion of the * Pinta,' a careless steers- 
man ran upon a sand-bank, where she went to pieces. Her loss put 
an end for the moment to Columbus's plans for the further prose- 
cution of his discoveries; for the 'Nina,' the only vessel left to 
him, was the smallest of the squadron. Yet hope for the future was 
to be extracted even from this calamity, since it displayed in a very 
striking manner the friendly good faith of the natives, who by the 
most eager hospitality laboured to alleviate a disaster which it 
was impossible to repair. So cordial, indeed, was their treatment 
of the Spaniards that it suggested to the admiral the idea, as it 
was indicpensable that he himself should at once return to Spain, 



2() MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1493. 

of leaving a partj' behind him to form the germ of a future colony. 
The men were willing to stay behind ; the plan \\ as still more 
welcome to the natives, wlio were a peaceful race, and lived in 
constant fear of the inhabitants of some neighbouring islands, 
whom thej^ called C .ribs, and who tivquenily made descents upon 
their coasts, but against whom they telt assured they could rely 
on the Spaniards to protect them. To stren^ithen their reliance on 
them, he brougiit on shoi'e some muskets and a cannon, and tired 
them at the trees. The natives w^re awe-stricken bey"nd measure 
at the roar, ^vhich they compared to thunder; and still more at 
the force with which the balls shattered the largest trees, and 
which strengthened their impres-ion that the gods had come down 
among them in the likeness of men. And they gladly co-operated 
in building a solid abode for their protectors, to .which Columbus 
gave the name of La Navidad, the Nativity, in remembrance that 
it was on Christmas Day that he had escaped from the wreck; and 
having fortified it with the guns which ho had saved from bis ill- 
fated ship, in the first week of the year 1493 he set sail on Lis 
return home. On his way, as has been mentioned, he was rejoined 
by the ' Pinta ; ' and after a stormy voyage, in which the ' Nina ' 
nearly foundered, on the fifteenth of March he re-entered the har- 
bour of Palos, whence he had left above seven months before, and. 
where, as no tidings of him had been received in tlie interval, the 
citizens in general had begun to despair of ever seeing or hearing 
of him again. 

All the honours which tlie most punctilious court in Christen- 
dom could devise, were lavished on him at his arrival at Barcelona, 
where the sovereigns then were. They rose from their thi-ones to 
receive him ; he was placed on Ferdinand's right hand ; a solemn 
thanksgiving in tbe Koyal Chapel proclaimed the sense that prince 
and people entertained of his unparalleled achievement ; what 
was probably more gratifying to his own ambition, no delay was 
allowed to interpose to the equipment, on a far larger scale than 
before, of an expedition to extend his discoveries and his acquisi- 
tions. Acquisitions to which the sovereigns took care to procure 
what was then considered a legal right, by obtaining a grant from 
the Pope of all the lands which he had yet discovered, or here- 
after might discover, so long as he did not trench on countries 
which a similar sanction had already conferred upon Portugal. 
One of the benefits to humanity that had been promised as the 
result of his previous voyage, had been the conversion to Chris- - 
tianity of the different barbarian tribes with whom he might meet; 
and, to carry out this part of the scheme, some natives whom he 
had brought with him were solemnly baptised ; and a body of 
missionaries was carefully selected to accompany the new expodi- 



4.D. 1493.] HIS SECOND VOYAGE. 27 

tion, that the diffusion among the savages of a linowledge of tho 
true religion might compensate to them for the loss of their 
liberty, and for their subjection to a foreign master. In September 
1493, Columbus again set sail ; now in command, not of three 
miserable ill-found vessels, but of a well-appointed fleet of seven- 
teen ships, well adapted for the service, and of 1,500 men, no 
longer desponding, but confident of success, and glory, and riches. 
But the news which reached him on his return to La Navidad, was 
far from corresponding to the hopes which he and they had formed. 
The men whom he had left behind, the moment that his control- 
ling authority was removed, had treated the natives with a rapa- 
city and cruelty that turned the whole nation against them, except 
the king Guacanahan ; who had conceived for Columbus himself 
an affection, which he had extended to all his countrymen. But 
the people in general, gentle or timid though they were, at last rose 
in arms to defend their wives and their homes. One chief, more 
warlike than his fellows, the cacique of Cibao, a district which 
the Spaniards had invaded, on account of a report of the gold 
mines which it contained, not contented with cutting oft' one or two 
parties of stragglers, attacked La Navidad itself, set it on fire and 
burnt it ; some of the Spaniards were killed in the fight, some 
were driven into the sea and drowned ; and, of the whole body 
which Columbus had left behind him at the beginning of the year, 
scarcely one remained alive. It was a state of things far different 
from what he had expected to find ; yet he was so far from being 
discouraged, that having discovered a spacious and well-protected 
harbour, he at once founded a city, which, after the name of the 
Queen, his patroness, he called Isabella. While its walls were 
rising, he sent a detachment to explore the interior of the island, 
with an especial charge to ascertain the position of the goldmines ; 
and, when they returned loaded with the precious metal with 
which they reported the bed of every river to be impregnated, he 
sent the bulk of his fleet back to Spain to present to the sovereigns 
their share of the large treasures which he had collected, and to 
beg, in return, for a further supply of food, wine, arms, and horses, 
which being hitherto unknown in the islands, struck the natives 
with especial amazement. He himself remained about two years 
in the country ; enlai-ging by a careful exploration, his knowledge 
of Hispaniola, Cuba, and the adjacent seas, in one of his trips 
discovering the important island of Jamaica ; and framing careful 
laws for his settlement of Isabella, so that it was the spring of 
1496 before he returned to Spain j to be again receive 1 with great 
favour by the Queen ; and after a time to prepare a third expe- 
dition. 

But that third expedition was fraught with great mortification 



28 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1498. 

to him. As far as it depended on himself, it was as successful as 
ever. He even added to his discovery of the islands, that of the 
continent of America ; steering more southward than on either of 
his former voyages, and thus taking a course which brought him 
to the mouth of the Orinoco. On the first of August 1498, he 
landed in Guiana; and having explored the coast to the westward, 
he then stood to the north, and made once more for Hispaniola. 
But, as on his second return to it, he found everything in con- 
fusion. No one but himself could conciliate the natives ; no one 
but himself could restrain the arrogance and lawlessness of 
the Spaniards ; nor even could he himself do so entirely. Before 
his return to Spain in 1496, some of the more unruly spirits had 
been loud in expressions of discontent, which had reached the 
ears of Isabella herself, though her confidence in his wisdom 
and probity had been too firm to be shaken by them. But, 
during his absence matters grew worse. His brother, to whom 
lie had delegated the chief authority, had founded the city of 
St. Domingo, on the opposite side of the island ; but the natives had 
risen in arms to resist the tribute which he imposed on them. 
While he was occupied in quelling this insurrection, a body of 
the Spaniards had taken advantage of his difficulties, to break out 
into open mutiny. And though Columbus, who arrived at the 
very crisis of these complicated troubles, was able, by his own 
personal authority and address, to compose them for a time, some 
of those who rather concealed than laid aside their discontent, 
sent complaints of the admiral's conduct to Spain, which found a 
support there, which it is easier to account for, than to excuse. 
The fact was, that the apathy with which his enterprise was at 
first regarded had been succeeded by an equally unreasoning 
covetousness. Public opinion, always apt to run into extremes, 
was now picturing the newlj' discovered territories as storehouses 
of wealth for all who could obtain a position there ; and many of 
the nobles, hoping to rise to governments and other offices of trust 
and emolument, clamoured loudly against the agreement which gave 
the chief posts to him whom they did not scruple to brand as a 
foreign adventurer ; and encouraged and disseminated every com- 
plaint that was uttered against any part of his administration. 

One of his measures, by which he had authorised those Spaniards 
to whom he had granted tracts of land to employ the natives in 
its cultivation, offended Isabella's own sense of propriety and 
humanity. It was, as she at once perceived, the foundation of a 
system of slavery ; and though the general doctrine ^ of that age 

' One Spanish casui.st even founds their smoking tobacco, and not 
the right of his nation to enslave trimming their beirds a I'EspagnoIe 
the Indians, among other pleas, on (Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, liv. 



A.D. 1498.] ARROGANCE OF BOBADILLA. 29 

was, that ignorance of Christianity was in itself a crime sufficient 
to deprive the untutored savages of all claim to the ordinary 
rights of manhood, it was not her feeling. When Columbus sent 
a number of the natives over to Spain to be sold, that the purchase- 
money obtained for them might be expended for the good of the 
colony, she prohibited the sale ; and beyond all question her dis- 
approval of this measure greatly influenced her consent to send 
out a commissioner to enqiure into his conduct, and into the state 
of the colony. It is quite consistent with the highest admiration 
for the general tenor of Columbus's government, in which the 
treatment of the natives is the only blot (that too, being, as has 
been said, in entire accordance with the feeling of the age), to 
admit that the appointment of such an officer might have done 
good. A man invested with authority such as that given to the 
admiral, must be more than human, if constant battling with the 
natives (for whom every true Spaniai-d felt nothing but contempt) 
on the one side, and with his own followers on the other, did not 
lead him occasionally to try and conciliate the latter at the ex- 
pense of the former. But the instrument was singularly ill chosen. 
Bobadilla, to whom the commission was entrusted, which invested 
him for the time with the supreme judicial authority in the new 
settlements, was a weak vain man, whose head was turned by the 
, power thus conferred upon him ,• and who seems to have conceived 
that his mission was in itself such a condemnation of Columbus 
as authorised his treating him as a convicted criminal. The 
moment that he reached St. Domingo, he arrested the admiral, 
put him in irons, and sent him back to Spain ; and, having done 
so, proceeded to perpetuate the very abuse which had most moved 
the government at home to send him out, the slavery of the 
natives. 

He was soon superseded. But before the proofs of his incom- 
petency reached the mother country, his treatment of Columbus 
himself, as proved by his arriving at Cadiz, still in fetters, by 
Bobadilla's express command, had raised a storm of indignation 
against him which no sagacity in command would have been able 
to counterbalance. The sovereigns themselves on the admiral's 
arrival did their utmost to redress the undeserved insults which he 
had suffered. They again invited him to court; enjoined Ovando, 
the officer who was sent out to supersede Bobadilla, to provide for 
the full indemnificationof himself and his brothers, who had equally 
fallen imder Bobadilla's displeasure, and to secure them for the 
future the full enjoyment of all their privileges and emoluments ; 

XV. c. 3., quoted by Prescott). It present day, whatever may be 
would be unsafe to lay too much thought of tlie second, 
stress on the first argument at the 



30 MODEEN IIISTOEY. U-d. 150G. 

and they showed their unabated confidence in Columbus as an 
explorer, by equipping for him, in the spring of 1502, a fresh 
squadron, with which he hoped so to carry out his original de- 
sign as to pass beyond the lands he had already discovered, and 
still to find a channel through them which should conduct him to 
India. He did not yet know the vastness of the continent which 
barred his way; but the expedition produced him personally 
nothing but mortification and suffering, though the disasters which 
he met with did not arise from the unattainable character of his 
object. It cannot indeed be said that his voyage was wholly 
barren of results ; for he discovered and explored the coast of the 
Isthmus of Darien as far as the Gulf of Honduras, and gave its 
name to the beautiful harbour of Porto Bello ; but when he tried 
to establish a colony on the mainland, where no settlement had 
yet been planted, his attempt was defeated by the -warlike spirit 
of the natives. 

He retraced his steps towards HIspaniola, but met with harder 
weather than he had ever previously experienced. In one storm 
he lost two of his ships, (he had .but four). A second tempest 
drove those which the first had spared on the shore of Jamaica, 
which he had some difficulty in reaching alive ; and still greater 
in leaving, no Spaniards had yet been settled there, and, when he - 
desired to send intelligence of his situation and need of aid to St. 
Domingo, he could procure no means of conveying his messengers, 
but the canoes made by the savages of trunks of trees hol- 
lowed out by fire, and so rudely fashioned as to be scarcely 
manageable. "While he was awaiting their return, he was fortu- 
nate enough to establish his ascendency over the natives by pre- 
dicting an eclipse of the moon ; but, when his messengers reached 
Hispaniola, they found Ovando almost as unfriendly to him as 
Bobadilla had been. He evidently feared lest Columbus's return 
to the island should diminish his own authority ; but the admiral, 
who had for some time felt his health failing, was anxious only to 
return to Spain. At last, in the autumn of 1504, he procured two 
ships, set sail, and after a stormy voyage reached the mouth of the 
Guadalquivir in November. 

It was a heavy blow to him to find Queen Isabella, whom he 
had always deservedly regarded as his chief protectress, on her 
deathbed. But Ferdinand, though of a far less disinterested or 
high-minded character, was well able to estimate the vast ser- 
vices which he had rendered to the kingdom, and received him ' 
with the honour he deserved, which however he was not destined 
long to enjoy. In May 1506, he died, exulting in the conscious- 
ness that he was leaving behind him an immortal name, as the 
discoverer of a new world. The full harvest of his discoveries was 



i.D. 1517.J THE SPANIARDS VISIT YUCATAN. 31 

to be reaped by those wlio should follow him, the glory he felt 
to be his own. In his own words, 'he had opened the gate by 
which others might enter.' And posterity has been just to him, 
and, deservedly as many of those who trod in his steps as dis- 
coverers and colonisers are honoured and admired, still places the 
name of Columbus above them all as the man to whose sagacity, 
hardihood, energy and perseverance, all those who followed him 
are indebted for the rare opportunities of achieving their own 
renown. 

And many and brave were those who in the quarter of a cen- 
tury which followed the death of the great admiral, sought fortune 
and fame by the path which he had opened to them. The most 
illustrious of all, whether we regard his own enthusiastic character 
and lofty genius, or the splendour of the empire which he over- 
threw, was unquestionably Hernando Cortez, the Conqueror of 
Mexico. And, taking him as a representative of the rest, we may 
pass over the labours, energetic and fruitful as they were, and 
devote our attention to his exploits. 

The spirit of discovery was in no degree quenched by the un- 
fortunate issue of the last voyage of Columbus. Settlements were 
established on Darien, and in the Bay of Honduras; and in 1517 
a squadron had been driven by a gale to Yucatan, where the leader 
Cordova was at once struck Avith evidences of a higher civilisation 
than had yet been met with in any part of the New World. The 
people dwelt in solid houses of stone, and wore garments of a fine 
texture, with abundance of gold ornaments of elaborate workman- 
ship. But they were also fierce and unfriendly ; they attacked 
the Spaniards not only with courage, but with some degree of 
skill ; Cordova himself was severely wounded, and compelled to 
make a precipitate retreat ; but on his return to Cuba, to which 
island he belonged, he made a report to Velasquez, the governor, 
of which the portion which testified to the evident wealth of the 
nation which he had discovered, more than counterbalanced that 
which spoke of the difficulties to be encountered in subduing 
them. The report was corroborated in all respects by the leader 
of an expedition sent out the next year to the same country. And 
the agreement of the two confirmed Velasquez (who in the mean- 
time had procured full authority from the home government to 
explore, conquer, and, in whatever way might seem best, to es- 
tablish the authority of Spain over the region thus fortunately 
discovered) in his resolution to equip a force sufficient to ensure, as 
he imagined, the subjugation of a territory of which he had not 
the remotest idea of the extent, or the population, or the general 
. resources. He only inferred that it was rich, and that, however 
numerous its people, being uncivilised and infidel they could not 



32 MODEEN EISTORY. [a.d. 1518. 

possibly resist tlie attack of the Spaniard who was at once a 
trained warrior and a Christian. Had he, however, had the most 
accurate knowledge of all the particulars of which he was igno- 
rant, he could not probably in the whole world have found a com- 
mander for the force which he designed to employ better calculated 
to command success than the officer whom he selected. Hernando 
Cortez, now in the prime of manhood,^ had won the governor's 
confidence by the boldness, presence of mind, and fertility of re- 
source which he had displayed in the contest with the natives of 
Cuba, which had ended in the secure establishment of the Spanish 
colony in that great island ; and, though he had not hitherto had 
any opportunity of displaying these qualities, he was further en- 
dowed with a force of character which bent all men to his will, 
an address which reconciled them to their compliance, and a 
rough and ready eloquence admirably calculated to inspire the 
meanest of his followers with a portion of his own resolution and 
confidence. Ever since the settlement of Cuba, he had been look- 
ing forward to the day, when he too might become the founder of 
a settlement, which might be at once a source of wealth and 
glory to himself, and (for the two objects were united in the as- 
pirations of many of the Spanish cavaliers, and influenced no 
heart more sincerely than that of Cortez), might also conduce to 
the glory of God, and to the spread of true religion among those 
to whom the name of the Saviour was as yet unknown. That 
opportunity was now placed in his reach. So sanguine was 1:^^ of 
the result that he expended the whole of his own fortune in aiding 
to equip the force which he was to command, and which, for those 
days and those regions, was well calculated to make an impression 
on those who saw it set forth. Eleven ships, one of 100 tons 
burden, conveyed 680 Spaniards, 200 native Indians and 16 
horses, with 14 cannon of different calibre : a few missionaries 
being added to the soldiers, that conversion and conquest might 
proceed hand in hand. No such force had yet been employed in 
the New World. But had it been suspected that the warriors of 
the land which they were preparing to invade were to be counted 
by tens, perhaps by hundreds of thousands ; amply endued with 
native courage, and strengthened by all the aids of organisation 
and discipline, even Cortez might have hesitated before undertak- 
ing such an enterprise with such means. Fortunately, however, he 
did not suspect the real magnitude of the Avork before him till he 
had advanced too far to turn back ; even had the withdrawal of 
his hand from any enterprise which he had undertaken been con- 
sistent with his firm unyielding disposition. 
It was on the eighteenth of February 1519, when, mass having 
* He was bora in 1845, so that he was thirty-four years old. 



&.D. 1619.] COUKAGE OF THE NATIVES. 33 

been solemnly celebrated on board the flagship, and the -whole expe- 
dition having been specially commended to the protection of St. 
Peter, the patron saint of the commander, he weighed anchor and 
steered towards Yucatan ; coasting round that peninsula, till he 
arrived at the spot which Grijalva had visited the year before. It 
was Tabasco, a populous town at the mouth of a river bearing the 
same name ; and he al; once had proof of the correctness of that part 
of his predecessor's report which represented the difficulties to be 
encountered, for the mere sight of his squadron brought down a large 
array of 40,000 men to oppose his landing : a fierce battle ensued ; 
so dauntless were the barbarians that even the artillery of the 
Spaniards, though they had never seen such weapons "before, 
failed to make any impression on them ; they threw dust and 
leaves into the air in derision of the smoke, and it might have 
gone hard with the invaders had not Cortez, as a last resource, 
brought up his handful of cavalry. The Americans had never 
seen a horse, and fancying him and his rider to be one animal of a 
portentous, perhaps of a divine character, they were stricken with 
an instant panic, and, throwing away their arms, fled from the 
field which they had nearly won. So critical had been the 
struggle that the Spaniards themselves attributed their victory to 
the supernatural aid of one of the saints, who, as numbers of them 
aflirmed, had been seen careering by the side of Cortez on a white 
charger, and aiding the general in leading on his horsemen to the 
charge ; St. Peter himself, as Cortez maintained, but, in the general 
belief, St. Jago, the patron saint of Spain, thus sent forth from 
Paradise to open to his devout s'ervants a new dominion. 

The army thus defeated was the entire force of the tribe. The 
Tabascans at once submitted, and even consented to become Chris- 
tians ; their conversion being facilitated by tlie singular coincidence 
that they themselves held the Cross in reverence, being used to 
worship it as the symbol of the God of rain, which, in that climate, 
was naturally regarded as the first of blessings. The next day 
was Palm Sunday ,• and on that morning the whole army, each 
soldier bearing a palm hrauch in his hand, headed by their priests, 
and accompanied by thousands of the Tabascan converts, marched 
in solemn procession to the great temple, and, formally deposing 
the image of the presiding deity, enthroned the Virgin and her 
infiint Son in his place. 

On the Monday Cortez proceeded on his voyage. In reply to 
his questions as to the country whence they procured their gold, 
the Tabascans had answered Mexico, pointing to the west as 
the direction in which that country lay ; towards Mexico therefore 
Cortez still pressed forward. And when, a few days afterwards, 
he again halted at the spot where he subsequently founded the 



34 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1519. 

city of Vera Cruz, he found that he had reached territory subject 
to the authority of the Emperor of Mexico, though Mexico itself 
-was an inland country. Among the presents which the Tabascans 
had brought to him in token of their submission were some female 
slaves, one of whom was a Mexican by birth and soon learnt 
Spanish enough to act as his interpreter. By her assistance and 
tliat of one of his own followers, who in previous voyages had 
acquired some knowledge of the Indian dialects, he was enabled 
to communicate with the chief men of the district where he was 
now anchored, who came down to visit the squadron in a friendly 
spirit, bringing presents of game and fruit. The information 
which he thus obtained was of a checquered character. He learnt 
how boundless and irresistible the power of the Emperor of 
Mexico, whose name was Montezuma, was believed to be ; but he 
also learnt that there was a current belief among the natives that 
about that time some beings of a superior order, akin to their own 
deities, were to arrive in the land and to become its masters; 
indeed, one of his new visitors remarked that a shining gilt helmet 
worn by one of the Spanish soldiers resembled that on the head of 
the god Quetzalcoatl in the great temple at Mexico. He also 
learnt what was calculated to be of at least equal assistance to 
him, that Montezuma was regarded with moi'e fear than love by 
his own subjects, and with undisguised jealousy and hatred by the 
neighbouring princes : not that his unpopularity among the Mexi- 
cans was deserved, for he was skilful in war, strict in the admini- 
stration of justice (which, in one respect, was better secured in his 
dominions than it was at that tiriie in any nation of Christendom, 
by the fact of the judges holding their offices for life, instead of 
during the king's pleasure), and judiciously munificent in the 
encouragement of public works of utility and humanity, such as 
roads, aqueducts, and hospitals; but these real virtues were 
neutralised in the eyes of the multitude by a pompous haughtiness 
not shown by previous sovereigns, while his architectural and 
engineering improvements necessitated the imposition of heavy 
taxes, which are borne with as much impatience by barbarians as 
by more civilised communities. Cortez, therefore, had some 
reason to hope that in the enterprise for which he was preparing 
he should find not only allies without but partisans within Monte- 
zuma's kingdom, both eager to co-operate in the overthrow of his 
power. 

That prince was thrown into a state of perplexity and alarm by 
his arrival, of which he received speedy intelligence, for among 
the marks of an extraordinary civilisation in Mexico was the 
existence of a regularly organised system of couriers, which con- 
veyed news from the coast to the capital, a distance of 200 



A.D. 1519.J ALARM OF MO:STEZUMA. 35 

miles, in 24 hours ; and some of the Spaniards' last visitors 
had in this way forwarded him a drawing which gave a sulli- 
cientlv faithful representation of their arms, their horses, and the 
' waterhouses,' as they called the ships in which they had arrived, 
and which struck people accustomed only to canoes with as much 
amazement as any part of their equipment. He could hardly 
disguise from himself the conviction that the strangers were the 
supernatural heings who were destined to supersede his dynasty, 
and he bent his whole efforts to postpone the evil day by keeping 
them at a distance ; but the very means which he took helped to 
defeat his object. Cortez had announced to the chiefs whom he 
had met at Vera Cruz that he had been expressly commanded by 
his own sovereign to visit Montezuma in his capital ; and, in reply 
to this commimication, the Emperor now sent an embassy to 
express his sorrow that the distance of Mexico from the coast 
rendered the visit of the Spaniards to his court impracticable, and 
his advice or wish that they should therefore retiu-n to their own 
country without delay; while he most effectually counteracted 
this advice by a present, the value of which exceeded the wildest 
idea that had yet been formed by them of his wealth : gorgeous 
specimens of featherwork, robes of cotton, fine as silk, and ex- 
quisitely dyed, helmets and cuirasses of pure gold, and plates of 
gold and silver as large as carriage wheels, and wrought with a 
delicacy of workmanship that no Spanish goldsmith could equal. 
One single piece of plate was afterwards valued at 50,000 
guineas ; and Cortez only spoke the most literal truth when in 
reply he assured the ambassadors, that the Emperor's munificence 
only made him the more desirous to be admitted to a personal 
interview with him. 

His commission from Velasquez had not contemplated an inland 
expedition of such a mag-nitude; but the sight of the Mexican 
gold had had the same effect on his followers as on himself. A 
march of 200 miles seemed but a slight labour when it was to be 
recompensed by riches such as were contained in the Mexican 
capital ; and, leaving a small force behind him to lay the founda- 
tion of a permanent settlement, and of a city to which he gave 
the name of the Villa rica de Vera Cruz, he at once marched with 
the main body on the road to Mexico. It was a most opportune 
moment at which he reached the first city which lay on his line 
of march, Cempoalla, the capital of the Totonacs, a people who 
were vassals and tributaries of the sovereign of Mexico. They 
regarded Montezuma with a mixture of hatred and fear ; but they 
had also heard of the victory gained by Cortez at Tabasco, and 
were half inclined to trust in his promise to relieve them from 
Mexican tyranny, when, while they were hesitating, they were 



36 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1519. 

compelled to an instant decision by tlie arrival of a body of Aztec 
or Mexican nobles, who came to receive the yearly tribute. 
Cortez urged them to refuse the money, and to throw the col- 
lectors into prison. His influence overruled even their long- 
standing awe of their great neighbour. The Mexicans were 
arrested; and at night, with a singular refinement of artifice, 
Cortez himself released them, and bade them return to their master 
with assurances of his own undiminished friendliness ; while the 
Cempoallans, feeling that, after the insult which they had offered 
to Montezuma in the person of his ambassadors, they had no 
resource but to rely on the protection of the Spaniards, at once 
took the oaths of allegiance to the King of Spain. 

It was not so easy to induce them to embrace his religion, yet 
even this too was effected. The general's enthusiasm for the work 
of conversion was so sincere as to be irrepressible. The supersti- 
tion of the natives of every part of the continent was shocking to 
his mind, since the victims which they offered to their gods were 
prisoners taken in war, whose bodies afterwards formed the chief 
dainties of their religious feasts. And, when remonstrances against 
such horrors proved of no avail, Cortez made no scruple of employ- 
ing force to terminate them. He sent one body of soldiers to 
occupy the chief temple ; another to seize the cacique (as the . 
princes in that country were called), and the priests, who with 
frantic clamours were summoning the citizens to protect their 
. gods ; and when he had thus terrified all into inaction, his men 
tore the huge idols from their pedestals, hurled them down the 
steps, and burnt them in the open square of the city, Eash as 
such an attack, by a few hundred men, on the religion of a nation 
seemed, it was effective. The Totonacs, when they saw that their 
gods could neither protect nor avenge themselves, ceased to re- 
verence them, and now willingly consented to the substitution of 
the Cross for deities so helpless, and to receive baptism. 

Assured by this great succesa of future good fortune, Cortez 
became more eager than ever to advance without delay ; but before 
doing so, he won the consent of his followers to two measures, 
which show more strikingly than any other events in his history 
the extraordinary power which he possessed over the minds of all 
with whom he came in contact. As yet his enterprise was only 
known in Spain as an expedition sent out by Velasquez. Even 
before he quitted Cuba that officer had already shown si^ns of 
regarding him with jealousy ; and Cortez was not without fears, 
which were justified by subsequent occurrences, that he might 
endeavour to supersede him. He resolved therefore to report his 
proceedings directly to Charles V. himself; and, in order to impress 
him the more strongly with the importance of what had been 



i.D. 1519.] COETEZ DESTROYS HIS FLEET. 37 

achieved, and to obtain from him independent authority for the 
future, he proposed to his followers to surrender the whole of their 
share of the treasures already acquired, in order to send his royal 
master a present worthy of the crown. Covetous as they were of 
gold, they all cheerfully consented ; and a day or two afterwards, 
as, notwithstanding this apparent unanimity, he learnt on unde- 
niable evidence that there were some among them who, either 
from innate discontent or from a desire to court Velasquez, were 
preparing to seize a ship and desert, he first dismantled the fleet, 
bringing on shore their guns, sails, and cordage, which afterwards 
proved of the greatest utility to him, and then sank every ship 
but one. For a moment the soldiers were highly indignant. They 
whose plans had been bafiled easily roused the suspicions and 
fears of their comrades, as if they were now entrapped into an 
attempt in which success was almost hopeless, and from which 
escape was Impossible. But their plausible murmurs were dissi- 
pated by the presence of mind and eloquence of Cortez. He 
pointed out that, as far as the value of the ships went, he was 
the chief loser, since most of them had belonged to him- 
self; that their destruction must greatly conduce to the success 
of their enterprise, by enabling the crews, a hundred vigorous 
warriors, to join the army; and, keeping the most magna- 
nimous and effective argument for the last, that it was beneath 
brave men like them, Spaniards and victorious, to think of with- 
drawing from such a career of triumph. If any were so base as to 
wish to return, they might depart in the vessel which was still 
left ; he himself would persevere while a single soldier remained 
faithful to his standard. He had touched the right chord. Even 
of those who had previously been discontented, not a man deserted 
him. One general shout, ' To Mexico ! ' rose from the whole army. 
With the consent of all, the remaining vessel was sent to join her 
consorts at the bottom of the sea, and the whole army marched 
forward, with a full confidence in its own invincibility. 

They came to more than one great city on their march, gather- 
ing continual indications of the might of Montezuma from the 
universal terror with which his name was regarded, and receiving 
more than one embassy from the prince himself. When two- 
thirds of the distance were accomplished, they found themselves 
near Tlascala, a state known to them by report as of great power 
in war, and implacably hostile to Mexico ; but when Cortez, in 
reliance on the latter circumstance, endeavoured to open a friendly 
communication with the chiefs, he found that the frequent in- 
terchange of courtesies between him and Montezuma had bred 
suspicion in their minds. At Last they rejected his advances, 
determined to refuse him admittance to their cit}', and to oppose 



38 MODERN HISTOKY. [a.d. 1619. 

his further progress by force; and it was not without a series of 
fierce battles, in which he was more than once on the brink of 
defeat, when defeat would have been destruction, that he was 
able to bring them to terms. But though thus subdued them- 
selves, they still questioned the power of the Spaniards to cope 
with Montezuma, and warned Cortez as eagerly against his 
treachery as against his open enmity. The latter imputation was 
soon found to be too well-founded ; halfway between Tlaseala 
and Mexico lay Cholula, the holy city of the Mexicans, where, 
according to tradition, their god Quetzalcoatl had dwelt for 
twenty years to teach the citizens the arts of civilisation. In 
his honour a vast pyramid, four times as large as the greatest 
of the similar structures iif Egypt, was raised in the middle of 
the city, surrounded by temples that could only be counted by 
the hundred ; and the fame of the city was so great that, though 
it was out of his line of march, Cortez decided in turfling to visit 
it. His delay seemed to ofier to Montezuma his last chance. 
By a fresh embassy, nominally sent to the Spanish general, but 
really to the Cholulan priests and nobles, he organised a plot 
to destroy the whole Spanish army ; but it was revealed to the 
Mexican Marina, and by her to Cortez : and he determined to 
take a vengeance, which, considering his critical position, it is 
hard to pronounce unjustifiable, and which was calculated to make 
the boldest pause before they conspired against a leader whose 
vigilance could not be eluded and who could take so fearful a 
revenge. He seized the cacique, the nobles, and the priests, who 
sought to excuse themselves by imputing the whole contrivance 
to Montezuma; his soldiers, whose guns were ready loaded, 
slaughtered them all with the forces that it had been intended 
to emplo}"^ for their own destruction. And then once more Cortez 
pressed forward, having now a fair plea, if he should need one, 
for treating Montezuma himself with whatever severity he might 
think safe or politic to exercise. 

But Montezuma was not disposed again to provoke the wrath 
of Cortez. The defeat of the Tlascalans, the most warlike of his 
neighbours, had convinced him that force was of no avail; the 
detection and chastisement of the Cholulans had proved that 
cunning was equally vain against an enemy who could both fight 
and watch. He tried, indeed, to bribe him to retire, by the offer 
of four loads of gold for himself, one load for each of his captains, 
and a proportionate yearly tribute to the king, if he would consent 
to return at once to Spain; but when the embassy, commissioned 
to make these offers, reached the camp, the soldiers had already 
beheld Mexico itself from the hills, and even Cortez might have 
found his influence powerless to induce them to content them- 



&.D. 1519.] APPEARANCE OF MEXICO. 39 

selves with tlie bare sight of a city which, to men worn with a 
toilsome march and many a stern conflict, seemed not merely 
a treasure-house of wealth, but a haven of rest and luxur3^ Por 
from the hills which they had how reached, Mexico presented a 
spectacle of unsurpassable beauty. Stately woods in which oaks, 
cedar, and cypresses grew to a size unknown in our colder climate, 
varied with orchards, meadows^ and gardens of many coloured 
flowers, which, as indispensable ornaments of their frequent 
religious festivals, were an object of national care, fringed the 
brightly blue waters of a series of lakes ; in the largest of which, on 
an island on its western side, rose the stately palaces and pyramidal 
temples, grand from their mere magnitude, of the city of Mexico. 
So brightly did the walls glisten, that to the excited imaginations 
of the Spaniards they seemed coated with burnished silver ; the 
sight, whetting their appetite for riches, makes them overlook all 
the difficulties which might interpose to their rendering them- 
selves masters of so tempting a prize. And when presently 
another embassy arrived from Montezuma, who, thinking resist- 
ance no longer practicable now that they were at his gates, 
desired to propitiate them by the cordiality of his reception, and 
sent his own nephew, the lord of the neighbouring city of Tezcuco, 
to bid them welcome to his capital, they thought their labours 
terminated, and with hearts in which not one feeling of doubt, 
much less of fear, remained, they joyfully pressed forward. Yet 
to men less accustomed to trample on danger, the position and 
greatness of the city might well have suggested misgivings. The 
island on which it stood could only be reached by two or three 
narrow causeways, and drawbridges, as suitable to cut off retreat 
as to bar approach ; and the population of the city was estimated 
by none of them at less than 300,000, and probably far exceeded 
that number. While Cortez, who had lost many of his bravest 
soldiers in the battles with the Tlascalans, had with him 
scarcely more than 350 Spaniards, of whom only 15 were cavalry, 
and about 6,000 native allies. But Montezuma meditated no 
treachery. His religious feelings ensured his submission, for he 
was now convinced that the Spaniards were the foreigners whose 
arrival had been prophesied, and consequently that to resist their 
supremacy would be to fight against his Gods. And had not 
circumstances consequently compelled Cortez to leave the com- 
mand for a while to isubordinate officers of less judgment and 
temper, and of inferior authority over his followers, it seems pro- 
bable that the fierce struggles and grievous bloodshed which 
subsequently ensued would have been avoided, and that the 
dominion of the Spaniards over the land would have been 
established without the striking of a single blow. In princelj 



40 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1619. 

state Montezuma came beyond his gates to meet Cortez, allotted 
him a palace for his residence, bestowed presents not only on his 
chief officers, but on everyone of his followers, and even on his 
Tlascalan allies, so long the objects of national hatred to the 
Mexicans, and acknowledged that the king beyond the waters, 
the Spaniards' King, was the lawful lord of all, and that he him- 
self only ruled in his name. The only interruption to the harmony 
that for a time seemed to be established between them was 
caused by the indiscretion of the general's religious zeal, the only 
feeling that ever overpowered his prudence, In his eagerness to 
convert the Emperor and all his subjects, he allowed himself to 
stigmatise the Mexican Gods as agents of the devil ; and Monte- 
zuma, greatly shocked at the insult, repented that he had shown 
their temples and their images to men capable of treating them 
with such irreverence. Yet Cortez was not entirely at his ease ; 
the necessity of constant vigilance which the leader of such a 
mere handful of men placed among such a host of strangers could 
not be permitted to forget for a moment, inevitably in its turn 
fostered the suspicions which dictated it. Even were Montezuma 
himself sincere and unchangeable, his subjects might be animated 
with very different feelings ; and a week or two after he had taken 
up his abode in Mexico, tidings reached Cortez that some of the 
band which he had left behind at Vera Cruz had been entrapped 
and murdered by an Aztec noble, who afterwards affirmed that his 
act had been suggested by the Emperor. Cortez probably doubted 
the truth of the excuse; but he could hardly feel sure that 
Montezuma's friendly disposition might not change, and that a 
similar plea might not become true hereafter; and, to guard 
against the consequences of such possible fickleness, he conceived 
the extraordinary idea of getting Montezuma altogether into his 
power by making him take up his abode in his own quarters, as a 
voluntary guest if possible, as a prisoner if he would not come 
willingly ; and so entire was the ascendency which he had 
established over him, that though, when the proposal was first 
made to him, Montezuma expressed the greatest indignation, and 
subsequently a not unnatural alarm, he finally yielded to the 
Spaniard's pertinacity and assurances of the most respectful 
treatment, and, while not concealing his feeling that he was guilty 
of a degrading submission, he accompanied. Cortez to his palace. 

But the respect which he was promised, and which was shown 
him for a day or two, did not last long. He had been compelled 
to summon to his presence the noble who had killed the Spaniards 
at Vera Cruz ; and as that chief, when sentenced to be burnt alive 
for his crime, persisted in affirming that he had but obeyed Monte- 
zuma's orders, Cortez put the monarch himself in irons, though 



A.D. 1520.] SUBMISSION OF MONTEZUIVLI. 41 

after the execution was over, lie removed the fetters with Ms own 
hands, and condescended to apologise for the measure, as one to 
which he had been most unwillingly compelled. Audacious as 
the act had been, and hardly to be justified if the release, which 
followed so quickl}^, was compatible with prudence, it is nevei-the- 
less not inconsistent with the sagacity and judgment which we 
have described as regulating Cortez's proceedings, for it entirely 
completed Montezuma's subjection and that of his nobles also, whom, 
for different reasons, it had reduced to a consciousness of utter 
dependence on his will. The Emperor could not even venture to 
avail himself of his permission to return to his own palace, fearing 
that his own nobles must regard him with diminished respect 
since he had been subjected to such insult. The nobles, solicitous 
for his safety, dared take no step of hostility against one who had 
given them such proof at once of his power and of his un- 
scrupulousness. And after a few days both Emperor and nobles 
took formal oaths of allegiance to the Spanish sovereign, and 
Montezuma sent him a further present of gold jewels and costly 
fabrics, such as, in the opinion of Cortez himself, no court in 
Europe had yet beheld, and no artists could imitate. It was a 
still greater proof of Cortez's influence over him that he even con- 
sented to allow the Spaniards to convert one of the temples into a 
place of Christian worship, and to erect in it an altar and a crucifix : 
though this profanation of these holy places roused among the 
citizens a feeling of indignation and rage stronger than that which 
had been provoked by the treatment of the Emperor himself ; and 
very shortly afterwards the priests were understood to be exciting 
them to a general insurrection, which, as Montezuma assured 
Cortez, he doubted his having now authority to prevent j and, 
while the whole city was thus agitated, and Cortez himself in great 
perplexity, his embarrassment was crowned by tidings from the 
coast that a powerful Spanish squadron had arrived off Vera 
Cruz, which he had little doubt had been sent by Velasquez to 
supersede him. 

It was in such moments that the promptitude of decision, the 
energy, and irresistible influence over all around him exercised by 
Cortez, showed themselves to the most conspicuous advantage. 
He contrived to quiet Montezuma's fears of his own people ; and, 
announcing to him that a body of his own countrymen, Spaniards, 
who, however, were traitors to their king, had landed at Vera Cruz, 
and that it was necessary that he should march in person against 
them, he appointed one of his ofiicers, named Alvarado, to govern 
in his absence, exacted from Montezuma a promise of continued 
friendliness towards his lieutenant, and then, with fewer than 
100 men, marched unhesitatingly against ten times that number 



i2 MODERN HISTORY. U-d. 1520. 

of his own countrymen, far better furnished with the means of 
"warfare than he and his followers could be after so long an absence 
from him. For he was right in his conjecuire. Velasquez had 
sent a fleet ■ of eighteen ships, with 900 men, of whom 80 were 
cavalry, under the command of Narvaez, an officer of proved 
courage, but, as was soon seen, of but little judgment, to take 
upon himself the supreme authority, and Narvaez showed an in- 
clination to exceed his commission, openly avowing his intention 
to arrest Oortez as a traitor, and send him back to Spain as a 
prisoner. Cortez would willingly have avoided a contest with 
him ; but, while seeking to avert the necessity of one, took steps to 
render himself equal to his adversary should a conflict become 
inevitable. He addressed a conciliatory letter to Narvaez himself, 
inviting him to a friendly co-operation ; and at the same time he 
wrote to some of his personal friends who made part of Narvaez's 
force, and sent Olmedo, the sagacious priest, whose influence he 
had himself acknowledged on more than one occasion, as an agent 
to tamper with the soldiers themselves. They were sufliciently 
inclined to listen to him, for he xas not unprovided with gold 
with which to strengthen his arguments ; and his description of 
Oortez's munificent spirit, joined to the proof which they received 
of his ability to indulge it, so wrought upon them, that few had . 
any real inclination to oppose a leader fi-om whom it was evident 
that more might be expected than from their own chief. Cortez 
hastened on to profit by their indecision before they had time to 
recover it. He picked up a garrison which he had left at Cholula, 
and was joined by the ablest of all his officers, Sandoval, whom 
he had left in command at Vera Cruz ; but still he could muster 
little more than 250 men, with whom it seemed madness to attack 
900, if the 900 were in truth resolved to fight. But he was aided 
by his very weakness. Narvaez was so confident in his strength 
that he kept but careless watch. Cortez surprised him by a night 
attack ; and, after a conflict of more noise than bloodshed, for the 
whole number of the slain on both sides amounted to only eighteen, 
Narvaez, who had received a severe wound, was taken prisoner, 
and his army gladly ranged itself under the banner of his con- 
queror. 

He returned with all speed to Mexico, where his presence was 
urgently needed by those whom he had left behind him. Alvarado 
had treated the Mexicans, including Montezuma, with a general 
insolence which Cortez had never shown, but on rare occasions 
and with deliberate design. They had risen in arms ; had attacked 
him ; had slain several of his men ; and Cortez had hardly com- 
pleted the incorporation of Narvaez's soldiers with his own, when 
he received despatches from his lieutenant in Mexico, urging his 



A.T). 152 .J REVOLT OF THE MEXICANS. 43 

instant return if he would m aintain his hold on the city. He hastened 
back by forced marches ; his force so augmented by the new 
comers that it amounted to 1,250 Spaniards, besides his Tlascalan 
allies; but the diificulties which he had now to confront were 
augmented in a degree infinitely greater than was the force with 
which he had to surmount them. He had returned to a war from 
which there was to be no respite. Montezuma himself was still 
friendly, but the Mexicans were irreconcilably exasperated, and 
had learned their strength. They were only rendered fiercer by 
the knowledge that Cortez was again among them. They attacked 
him in his quarters, the vanguard coming up even to the muzzles 
of his guns, while those in the rear plied their bows and slings, 
with which they were very dexterous, with fatal effect, inflicting 
a severe wound on Montezuma himself, when he came to the 
front and, in a mixture of entreaty and command, sought to per- 
suade them to desist from hostilities. It was plain that no hope 
remained to the Spaniards but in their own valour, and neither in 
that nor in skill was Cortez wanting to them. The greatest of the 
Mexican temples was close to their quarters, and as it was ascended 
by steps and terraces fi-om the outside, every terrace afforded a 
position from which the enemy could assail him with missiles. 
Leading the assault in person, he stormed the temple, penetrated 
into the inmost shrine, while the priests ran wildly to and fro, 
their long dishevelled hair streaming over their black mantles, 
calling loudly on their gods to protect themselves and chastise 
their sacrilegious invaders ; he threw down the altars, on which 
those of his own countrymen, who had been captured in the 
warfare with Alvarado, had been ruthlessly sacrificed ; hurled 
down the image of Huitzilo-potchli, the tutelar deity of the city, 
and cleared the space around by setting fire to the houses between 
the temple and his palace. But the Mexicans were not dismayed 
by his prowess. They had learned the power of numbers, and that 
they could more easily replace a hundred men than the strangers 
could afford to lose one ; and day after day they continued the 
conflict, wearing out the Spaniards with incessant toil, even though 
once more St. Jago was seen fighting in their ranks, accompanied 
by a lady robed in white, who, it would have been impiety to 
doubt, was the Virgin herself. It added to their troubles that 
Montezuma died of his wound, for while he lived, his position in 
their hands damped the ardour of many of his subjects, who felt 
that enmity to the Spaniards was disloyalty to himself ; and so 
strongly did Cortez feel the difference which his death made in 
their situation, that he at once resolved to evacuate the city. 

But the Mexicans were by no means inclined to permit him to 
withdraw unmolested. They foresaw that in that ease nothing 



44 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1520. 

could prevent his return with recruited force but his destruction ; 
while they conceived that now they had him wholly in their 
power. There was but one narrow causeway across the lake by 
which the whole army must retreat, and that was vigilantly 
watched by sentinels, blocked at the end by a strong force, and 
beset on both sides by thousands of canoes full of armed men, and 
at the edge, where the water was shallow enough to alford a 
foothold, by battalions densely ranged along its entire length. It 
was at midnight on the first of July 1520, less than eight months 
after his triumphant entry into the city, Cortez, thinking that as his 
path to the mainland was short and clearly marked out, darkness 
would be in his favour rather than that of the Mexicans, led his 
army, with as little noise as guns and horses could make, down 
the main street which led to the causeway. The citizens slum- 
bered too soundly to be disturbed ; but the sentinels were sleepless. 
The moment that the leading files of the invaders emerged from 
the shadow of the houses they gave notice of their approach, shout- 
ing the alarm, and running off in every direction to arouse their 
chiefs ; and in a few minutes the Spaniards were surrounded on 
all sides. Never did men fight for their lives with more dauntless 
heroism. But the odds were overwhelming. Those who could 
get within reach of them attacked them with swords and spears, 
those who were farther off with arrows and stones, holding their 
own lives as valueless if a score of them could strike down a single 
Spaniard, or, what they coveted still more, capture him as a 
victim to be offered to their Gods. Still the Spaniards struggled 
forward with intrepid gallantry and fortitude. Cortez himself 
outdid his former deeds of prowess ; and at last, after a fearful 
conflict of some hours' duration, Spanish discipline so far prevailed 
that those who had not been struck down forced their way to the 
mainland. Happily for them, the booty which they had hoped 
to carry off, and which now lay strewed along their road, diverted 
their enemies fi-om further pursuit; but in that brief struggle 
Cortez had lost at least a third of his force, both Spanish and 
native ; and the memory of the disaster was long preserved by the 
title ' noche triste,' the melancholy night, with which his country- 
men marked its anniversary in their calendar. 

But the Mexicans augured truly when they foreboded that if 
Coi-tez should escape he would surely return to attempt anew 
their subjection. Their new king Cuitlahuac was as brave as 
Montezuma, and had no tincture of the respect or superstitious 
awe with which that prince had regarded the foreign invaders ; 
and, though the Spaniards had escaped from the city itself, he 
resolved to prove to them that it was but a respite that they had 
gained. There was more than one spot between Mexico and tha 



A.D. 1521.] ARRIVAL OF REINFORCEMENTS. 45 

coast wliere it was easy to intercept them and take them at a dis- 
advantage ; and when the Spaniards reached the valley of Otumba, 
a few days' march from the city, they found it occupied by a force 
which, to their excited, I will not say despairing, minds, seemed 
to amount to no less than 200,000 men. Including native allies, 
their own number did not exceed 5,000. Yet once more they 
triumphed. Once more, as they believed, St. Jago led them on ; 
but their victory was really owing, as before, to the prowess and 
unshaken presence of mind of Cortez himself. So overwhelming, 
whatever may have been its real numbers, was the host of the 
infidels, that iu spite of their utmost efforts the Spaniards were 
giving way, when the general descried at a distance a warrior, 
whom the splendour of his equipment pointed out as .the leader 
of the enemy. Calling a body of picked warriors about him, he 
forced his way to the encounter, slew him in single combat, and 
the battle was over. Seeing their chief overthrown, the Mexicans 
fled, and the Spaniards were too much exhausted to pursue. 

No further attempt was made to arrest his progress ; so that he 
had soon full leisure to make preparations for a repetition of his 
attack on the city which he had been forced to leave. And he 
was fortunate enough to obtain more than one unexpected reinforce- 
ment ; as different Spanish ships, some full of soldiers, others 
loaded with arms, ammunition, and supplies of different kinds, 
arrived on the coast, and, with whatever purpose they had come, 
his persuasive tongue and unequalled renown won over all their 
crews ; and thus at the end of a few months he was able once 
more to take the field, and again he marched upon Mexico at the 
head of a larger army than had followed his standard on his 
former advance. Ilis old allies the Tlascaians gladly rejoined him, 
as did many other tribes hitherto groaning under their subjection 
to Mexico, but now convinced that the Spaniards were the 
supernatural strangers who were to enable them to throw off" the 
yoke. In the last week of May 1521 he once more came in sight of 
the city, and mustering his forces, found they amounted to 900 
Spaniards, of whom 87 were mounted, with a vast army of Tlasca- 
ians and other native allies, at least 70,000 strong ; in addition to 
which, he had provided himself with the means of obtaining the 
mastery of the lake, having caused a squadron of brigantines to be 
built at Tlascala, which were now taken to pieces, carried on men's 
shoulders twenty leagues across the mountains (a feat on which he 
was justified in priding himself, as one that had never before been 
even conceived), and launched at the other end of the lake. 

There was a new king in Mexico. After a reign of four months, 
Cuitlahuac had died of smallpox, and had been succeeded by his 
nephew Guatemozin, who was recommended to his countrymen 



46 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1521.. 

not more by his royal blood tlian by bis military renown, and by 
the inextinguishable hatred which be was known to bear to the 
Spanish name. He had never doubted that Cortez would return, 
and had devoted every moment of his reign to the collection of 
the entire resources of the empire to withstand the attack which 
be anticipated. Cutting off the lieads of some prisoners who had 
fallen into his bands, and of some of their horses, be sent botb 
among the neighbouring tribes, inviting all to join him in expelling 
the foreign invader from the land, whom he thus demonstrated to 
be neither invulnerable nor invincible ; and his call was answered 
by thousands of warriors, who flocked from all quarters to his 
standard. 

But Cortez was not daunted by a force which seemed almost 
countless. In truth, to draw back would have been impossible ; and 
he saw too, what did not occur to the barbarian, that on the 
causeway itself, which, as leading to the city, must be the object 
of the first assault, no superiority of numbers could much avail the 
citizens. He even conceived that it might be turned against them 
by the difficulty which must arise from supplying such a multi- 
tude : and with this view he cut oft" the aqueduct which supplied 
the city with water ; posted a strong brigade at the entrance to 
the other two causeways, to intercept all communication with the 
rural districts ; and then, having made these preparations, he led 
his main body again to force their way into the city by the third, 
the shortest, the same which had been the scene of the disasters 
of the ' noche triste.' The command of the land force he confided 
to Sandoval, while be himself directed the operations of his 
brigantines ; and the havoc which they made among the light 
canoes of the Mexicans fully answered his expectations. After a 
stubborn and murderous conflict, the Mexicans retired into the city, 
and left him master of the outskirts; but, though beaten, they 
were not dismayed. One of their priests had prophesied that 
within eight days the Gods would deliver their enemies into their 
hands ; and, trusting in this assurance, day after day they renewed 
the fight, Cortez captured and burnt the Emperor's palace ; they 
fought on with unabated ardour to save other buildings from the 
same fate. He stormed their strongest temple, and, as before, 
cast their Gods down headlong into the square beneath ; the duty 
of avenging such sacrilege seemed to have added vigour to their 
resistance. Once they had well nigh gained the victory, when it 
was wrested from them by a furious charge of cavahy, led on by 
Cortez himself, who at every crisis was the foremost in the con- 
flict. They had recourse to stratagem : digging deep trenches 
across their streets, and retiring before their assailants, so as to 
decoy them into spots from which retreat was nearly cut ofi'j 



A.]>. 1521. J CAPTURE OF GUATEMOZIN. 47 

and on one occasion they almost succeeded in obtaining an advan- 
tage which must have heen decisive of the war, they nearly 
captured the general himself. Cortez vrell knew that every 
prisoner whom they could seize was sacrificed to their Gods, and, 
regardless as usual of his own safety, was dashing among their 
masses to rescue some of his comrades, when six of the bravest 
Mexicans, concentrating their efforts on his capture, rushed on him 
at once, and began to drag him off. One gave him a wound so 
severe as almost to disable him, and his fate seemed inevitable, 
when his danger was perceived by some of his officers and by one 
Tlascalan noble, as zealous for his safety and as faithful as any 
Spaniard. Beneath their weapons the six devoted Mexicans 
perished, and Cortez was saved. But on that terrible day he not 
only sustained a heavy loss of killed and wounded, but had the 
mortification of leaving two of his heavy guns as prizes for the 
victors, and; what was infinitely more grievous, sixty-two of his 
comrades as prisoners ,• who, as his own eyes could see, were led 
up to the summits of the temples, and immolated on the accursed 
altar of sacrifice. 

He now determined, as he worked his way slowly forward, to 
destroy the city along his line of march, that no house might 
afford a shelter to a single enemy. Street after street was levelled 
with the ground; yet Guatemozin's spirits were unbroken, and to 
every summons to surrender he returned answers breathing nothing 
but defiance. The blockade of the other causeways was rigorous 
and effectual ; and soon famine was added to the sufferings of the 
citizens ; till, though the courage of the citizens failed not, their 
strength began to decay. At last, when the siege had lasted 
nearly three mouths, of incessant combat, Cortez led on his men to 
what proved the final assault. He was so confident of success, 
that he disposed a part of his squadron at the point of the lake 
nearest to the scene of action to intercept the flight of the Emperor ; 
and his expectations were realised. There had been no fiercer 
combat, nor any more fearful slaughter ; though, secure of victory, 
Cortez had given the most express directions that all who sub- 
mitted should receive quarter. At last victory declared for the 
Christians. A canoe, in which, as he had expected, Guatemozin 
was seeking to escape to the mainland, was pursued and captured j 
and the Spanish general was master of the great prize for which 
he had toiled with such heroic perseverance. 

He bore his triumph with chivalrous moderation ; he received 
his prisoner with noble courtesy, gi-anting most of his requests, 
which, to Guatemozin's honour, be it said, were for the protection 
of his people rather than for any indulgence to himself. And he 
ordained a solemn thanksgiving to the Almightj', in which the 



48 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1521. 

next day, the whole army joined, for the protection afTorded them 
in their arduous and perilous enterprise. But he was not able to 
follow throughout the dictates of his own humane though stern 
disposition. A captain of a force like his is often compelled to 
keep his followers in good humour by measures of which be him- 
self disapproves. No Spaniard thought it shame to avow his 
thirst for gold ; and now, in spite of their victory, they found 
their covetousness to a great extent disappointed. The spoil of 
the city was immeasurably below their expectation. It was vastly 
inferior to what they had seen with their own eyes on their 
original entrance into Mexico ; they accused Cortez himself of 
having conspired with Guatemozin to cheat them of their share, 
insisting that he should put the fallen monarch to the torture to 
compel him to reveal where the hidden treasure was secreted ; 
and, to clear himself from the imputations levelled at him, in an 
evil hour, for bis fame, he delivered Guatemozin into their hands. 
Ashamed of his weakness, he afterwards rescued him from them ; 
but not till they had disgraced themselves, their general, and their 
nation, hy inflicting on him the most, barbarous tortures, which he 
bore with the equanimity of a hero.^ He confessed that much of 
the treasure had been buried in the waters, from which, indeed, 
some was recovered by the Spanish divers. But the value of 
the conquest did not depend on the acquisition or loss of a few 
loads of gold. The whole country, with all its vast mineral 
wealth, all the fertility of its soil, and the incomparable advantages 
of its situation, was added to the Spanish dominions. 

The glory of having made such a conquest needed no addition. 
But Cortez increased it in the noblest . manner by the profound 
wisdom and humanity of his government of the land which he 
had subdued. The moment that the news of his success reached 
Europe, he was deservedly invested with the supreme authority 
over the whole country, the importance of which, in the eyes of 
the home government, was indicated by the name. New Spain, 
which they conferred on the province. And he at once applied 
himself to improve the condition of the country and its inhabitants. 
No one was ill-treated, but the unhappy Guatemozin himself. He 
was too brave ; his people were too much attached to him for him 
not to be dangerous as a captive, while to set him free was im- 
possible. For near four years Cortez scarcely ever ventured to have 

^ Mr. Prescott robs us of our belief of Jacuba, who was put to the tor- 

in Guatemozin's poetical reproof of ture with him, testified his anguish 

his companion in misfortune, ' Am by his groans, Guatemozin coldly 

I then reposing on a bed of flowers ? ' rebuked him bj- exclaiming, " Do you 

His narrative, translating the Span- think I, then, am taking my pleasure 

ish account, relating the story thus : in my bathV" ' — Conquest of Mexico, 

' When his companion, the Cacique ii. 3G8. 



A.D. 1524.] WISE GOVEKNMENT OF CORTEZ. 49 

him out of his sight ; he dared neither to ride nor walk to any 
distance unaccompanied by him ; the incessant constraint became 
too painful to be borne. He was almost as much his captor's 
prisoner as Guatemozin was his : and at last, on a charge of com- 
plicity in a conspiracy for a general massacre of all the Spaniards, 
he put him to death like a common criminal ; many, even of his 
Spanish followers, thinking the deed unjust, and a fresh stain, as 
it was, on the honour of the Governor and of the whole Spanish 
nation. 

But Cortez's treatment of the nation at large was that of a wise 
and most beneficent statesman. He rebuilt Mexico ; he repeopled 
it. Sincerely zealous for the propagation of the true religion, he 
sent to Spain for priests and learned men ; he founded schools 
and colleges ; he invited settlers from the mother country by the 
grant of estates, and introduced such European seeds and plants 
and animals as were suited to the climate, with the European 
methods of cultivation, thus greatly increasing the productiveness 
of the country. He even tried to make Mexico the mother of 
other colonies, sending out expeditions of discovery, which, how- 
ever, as he could not conduct them in person, were crowned with 
no especial success. A year or two afterwards he returned to 
Spain. The Government, always jealous of its foreign viceroys, 
had sent out a commission to examine into the truth of charges 
which it professed to have received against his administration, and 
he resolved to go home and justify himself. His task was easy ; 
his innocence was acknowledged. He was raised to one of the 
highest ranks of nobility, as Mai-quis of the Valley of Oaxaca,^ a 
title which, to mark the national sense of his pre-eminent merit, 
was shortened into the simple one of ' The Marquis,' as Columbus 
was called ' The Admiral,' without any other addition. And he 
was endowed also with a princely domain, the deed which con- 
ferred it on him affirming, with a compliment to him, not more 
honorable than it was just, that 'it was given because it is the 
duty of princes to honour and reward those who serve them well 
and loyally, in order that the memory of their great deeds should 
be perpetuated, and others be incited by their example to the per- 
formance of the like illustrious exploits.' 

He died in Spain, in the winter of 1547 ; and a few years later 
his remains were transported to the country which he had con- 
quered, and buried in the fittest place for their reception, the great 
Cathedral of Mexico. His conquest continued to pour its riches 
into the lap of Spain for nearly 300 years, till her continued mis- 
government drove the settlers, though her own sons, to throw ofl 

1 The Valley of Oaxaca is between Vera Cruz and Mexico. 
4 



50 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1547. 

her yoke. It is a remark of more tlian one English writer, and one 
not dictated entirely by national prejudice, that England is the 
only nation that has shown a genius for colonisation. Had the 
maxims and example of Cortez been followed in the subsequent 
government of Mexico, and the other conquests of his countrymen 
in the same regions, Spain would have been entitled to share that 
honour with us : while her disregard of his lessons cannot deprive 
him of the honour due to great qualities and great achievements^ to 
undaunted courage, to a sagacity beyond his age, and, -with, the 
single exception of his treatment of Guatemczin, an enlightened 
humanity ; all these great endowments being moreover constantly 
animated and directed by a deep feeling of, and zeal for, religion, 
and an honest devotion to the interests of his country'. 

1 The authorities for the preceding rica ; Prescott's Ferdinand and Isa- 

chapter are Washington living's hella; and The Conquest of Mexico, 

Lives and Voyages of Columbus and by the same author. 
his Companions ; Robertson's Ame- 



A.D. 1515.] ACCESSION OE FEANCIS AND CHARLES. 51 



CHAPTER III. 
A.D. 1515—1528. 

IT has heen already mentioned ttat Ferdinand and Louis died 
nearly at the same time. Louis expired on New Year's Day, 
1515, and was succeeded by his distant cousin and son-in-law, 
Francis, Count of Angouleme. Ferdinand died in January 1516, 
and was succeeded by Charles, the son of his daughter Joanna, and 
of Philip, son of the Emperor Maximilian ; Philip had died when 
Charles was only six years old, and, at his death, the young 
prince had at once become sovereign of the Netherlands. And 
now, though his mother, the imbecile Joanna, was still alive, he 
was at once acknowledged as king, not only of the dominions 
which had belonged to Ferdinand, but of Castile alsD, which 
Joanna had inherited from her mother Isabella, and over which 
Ferdinand had only exercised a vicarious authority as regent. 

The ncAV kings were both very young. Francis, at his accession, 
was under twenty-one ; Charles, at his, was little more than 
sixteen; but their youth only added keenness to the animosity 
which, for the last twenty j'ears, had marshalled their nations 
against each other. And circumstances soon arose that gave the 
rivalry between the princes themselves a more personal character 
than had been visible in the wars of their predecessors. At first 
fortune seemed to smile on him who eventually met with the 
most painful disaster. In the brief interval of time which elapsed 
between their attainment of their respective thrones, Francis gained 
a victory of such brilliancy as at once fixed on him the eyes of all 
Europe, and seemed to establish his glory on a height which 
would tax the energies of the most skilful warrior to equal it, and 
which could hardly be surpassed. 

As the heir of Louis and the husband of his daughter, he had 
succeeded to his claims upon Milan, and was hardly seated on 
his throne when he began to prepare to reassert them. In his 
opinion the victory of Ravenna would have secured the coveted 
territory to his predecessor, had not that prince been forced to 
turn his attention to enemies nearer home. And Francis's first 
step was to guard against the rec!urrence of any such danger, by 



52 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1515 

making a treaty with the monarch whom the last campaign ot 
Louis had proved to be the most formidable as an enemy, 
Henry VIII, of England, as well as with those other Powers 
which could be of the greatest use to him, "^'enice and Genoa, the 
Republics which, as it were, hemmed in the Milanese on each 
flank. And having thus endeavoured to counterbalance the rash- 
ness of engaging in such an enterprise at all, condemned as it was 
by the failure of two preceding monarchs, by the foresight of his 
diplomacy, he soon after midsummer quitted Paris to put himself 
at the head of the most splendid army that had for many genera- 
tions been assembled round the French standards. Twenty thou- 
sand cavalry and as many infantry were awaiting him on the 
Rhone, under the command of the Constable of France, Charles, 
duke of Bourbon, destined to win a great name in the coming 
campaign, and, in a subsequent one, to tarnish it, by yielding to a 
sense of intolerable wrongs, and, under their pressure, turning his 
firms, with fatal success, not only against his misguided and unjust 
king, but against his innocent country. And Bourbon was sup- 
ported by a staff worthy of him ; by de la Tremouille, whose valour 
had won for him, even in his youth, the confidence of that sus- 
picious tyrant Louis XI. ; by d'Imbercourt, whose reputation had 
been too well established to be hurt by his sharing in the defeat of 
Guinegatte ; by the veteran Trivulzio, who had seen more battles 
than any man alive, and had seen none without deriving fresh 
lessons of skill from them ; by Bayard, who though neither marshal 
nor baron, as a simple knight had achieved a renown both among 
his own comrades and his enemies, which has come down in un- 
diminished brightness to the present day ; by the scientific Navarro, 
who in former days had been one of Ferdinand's most trusted 
officers, but who had been taken prisoner at Ravenna, and had 
purchased his liberty by transferring his service to the French ; 
and by many others, princes and peers, who, if inferior in (kill or 
fame to those who have been mentioned, were no whit behind 
the most famous in contempt of danger and thirst for glory. 

In the first week of August the army reached the foot of the 
Alps, and learnt that the Milanese general, Prospero Colonna, a 
warrior whose chief defect was perhaps too much experience 
and too rigorous an adherence to the rules of his art, was 
awaiting them on the other side, and with a force of 20,000 
Swiss was covering all the passes between Mont Cenis and Mont 
Genevre. But Bourbon's genius was of a fertility above rules. 
The very perception that Colonna judged the hills beyond Mont 
Genevre impassable, determined him to select them for his march ; 
and, having chosen his line, he would not turn back, though before 
he had traversed half the distance he had ample proof how well 



A.u. 1515.] BOURBON'S PASSAGE OF THE ALPS. 53 

the Italian's opinion was justified by the character of the moun- 
tains he had undertaken to pierce. At one spot overhanging rocks 
barred the way; at another, vast chasms of which no eye could 
measure the depth seemed to cut otF all possibility of advance; 
sometimes, though the face of the mountain showed a chamois 
hunter's track, it was so narrow, so crumbling and unsure, and 
the precipice beneath was so fearful, that the invincibility of the 
other obstacles seemed less appalling than the practicability of 
such a path. But Boui'bon wa'* re«olute, and his resolution in- 
spired his followers with similar audacity. The overhanging rocks 
were blown up ; the ravines were bridged over ; parapets or 
balustrades screened the giddiest of the precipices. With in- 
credible rapidity the summit was reached, was passed : and the 
vanguard, under d'Imbercourt and Bayard, poured down into the 
plains below with so unexpected an impetuosity that they sur- 
prised Colonna himself, while sitting at dinner at Villa Franca ; ' 
the prince being even carried off as a prisoner, without one of his 
men having time to strike a single blow in his defence. 

For a moment this extraordinary success seemed likely to put 
into the hands of the French the prize which they desired with- 
out fighting. Colonna's Swiss had a month's pay due to them. 
Their fii'st movement, on hearing of his captivity, was to plunder 
the military chest ; but its contents were insufficient to satisfy 
their rapacity, and they were hesitating from what district 
or city to extort a further instalment, when the ofiicers of a 
brigade of their countrymen in the French army (for the €wiss 

A conqueror oft, a liero never, 

fought on both sides in all these wars) opened a communication 
with them, and by the promise of a far larger sum than they 
could possibly claim from their present employers, induced them 
to engage to exchange the service of the Duko of Milan for that of 
Francis. In a few days the French paymasters collected a large 
portion of the money necessary to carry out the bargain, and 
lodged it at the small fortified town called Buflaloro, at no great 
distance from Milan ; and the whole transaction was on the point 
of being concluded when 20,000 more Swiss came over the 
mountains to join Colonna, of whose disaster no intelligence 
had reached them. The captivity of their intended commander 
was a great blow to them, for pay and plunder were their liveli- 

1 Villa Franca is the same place Lombardy, and which seemed to 
■which, in recent times, has become secure the future peace of the Pen- 
still more memorable as the scene of insula by making France a party to 
the treaty which put an end to the the erection of the great Italian Con- 
claims of the House of Austria over federation. 



54 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1515. 

hood ; and there was no probability of Francis finding employment 
for them also. In their disappointment they suggested to their 
countrymen whom he had engaged that there was a shorter way 
of obtaining his money than earning it, and that was seizing it. 
No proposal could have chimed more harmoniously with their 
humour. It seemed certain that Buffaloro could not resist them 
for a moment ; and to storm it and appropriate the newly-filled 
military chest was to nnite victory, plunder, and pay together at 
one stroke. Two, indeed, of the leaders, the captains of the 
Bernese regiments, recoiled from such dishonour, and drew oil 
iheir men ; the rest, nearly 35,000 men, marched at once on 
BuiTaloro, but missed their blow; for the Bernese had also sent 
word to Lautrec, the French officer in charge of the money, of the 
meditated treachery, and thus had just given him time to escape. 
Furious at their failure, they proceeded to Milan itself, obtained a 
small reinforcement of cavalry, for the Swiss themselves never 
fought on horseback ; and, knowing that they had nothing but 
hostility to expect from the French, whose head-quarters had 
by this time reached Marignan, a village ten miles from the great 
city, they resolyed to anticipate their attack, and in the afternoon 
of the thirteenth of September came in sight of the French tents. 
Their movement was so unexpected that Francis himself was on 
the point of sitting down to dinner when their advance, in battle 
array and with intentions evidently hostile, was reported to him. 
Young and inexperienced as he was, he did not lose his presence of 
mindrfor a moment; but while Bourbon, with skilful promptitude, 
formed as much of the army as was at hand into line of battle, 
he mounted his horse, and putting himself at the head' of his 
cavalry, led them at once to the charge. The conflict whicli 
ensued has rarely been surpassed for stubbornness, nor for the deeds 
of valour performed by individuals, and the strange escapes of 
many of the chiefs from death or captivity, a result which was 
aided by the comparative darkness, as it was three in the after- 
noon before the engagement began, and the battle was pro- 
tracted till nearly midnight, when at last the moon went down. 
None exposed themselves more freely, or more nearly fell into 
the enemy's hands, than Francis himself and. Bayard. Bayard's 
horse ran away with him, piercing through the front line of the 
Swiss, and had almost carried him among their reserve, where he 
must have been captured, when he took advantage of some bushes 
which he was passing to throw himself from his horse, and then 
stripping off his helmet and some of the heaviest pieces of his 
armour, he was fortunate enough to find a deep ditch, along 
which he crawled on his hands and knees, and so regained his 
comrades. 1 rancis's horse was wounded, and he himself had 



A.D. 1515.J THE BATTLE OF JVIARIGNAN. 55 

received several severe contusions, when at last, worn out witli 
fatigue, he lay down to snatch a brief rest on the carriage of a gun. 
He could obtain no food, and when he asked for something to 
drink, the water which one of his troopers brought him in his 
helmet was discoloured with blood.^ It was even worse that 
presently it was found that the front line of the Swiss was 
within fifty yards of him. But it was safer to remain than to 
risk attracting attention by any attempt to retire farther ; and 
in darkness and silence the king and his army waited the return 
of day. With the dawn the battle was renewed, but it was no 
longer contested with the same eq^uality of fortune. On the first 
day many of the French columns were too far distant to bear any 
share in the action, so that those on whom the brunt of the 
struggle fell were greatly outnumbered ; but in the course of the 
night the divisions in the rear had all reached the field, and the 
preponderance of numbers was turned considerably in Francis's 
favour, besides that half of his army consisted of cavalry, of 
which, as has been alreadj'^ said, the Swiss were nearly destitute. 
Still for a while they fought with dauntless gallantry ; but their 
leaders could neither compete with Bourbon's skill, nor with the 
fiery gallantry of the highborn and renowned chivalry of France. 
These knights, indeed, had glory to retrieve, a stain to efface ; 
many of them had been in the shameful rout of Guinegatte; 
when Bayard himself had been taken, and those who had escaped 
captivity had owed their safety to the sharpness of their spurs and 
not of their swords. But on these hard-fought days their valour 
was as steady as it was brilliant. In the words of their sovereign, 
no one would again venture to call them ' armed hares ; ' ^ and by ten 
o'clock on the fourteenth the victory was decided in favour of the 
French. Not, indeed, without heavy loss ; if 12,000 Swiss corpses 
encumbered the field, at least 6,000 French shared their fate, the 
brother of the Constable, d'Imbercourt, and many others of the 
noblest blood and fairest fame in France being among the number. 
But the consequences of the victory were so real and so im- 
poi-tant that it seemed cheap even at so heavy a cost; and Francis, 
to give it additional lustre by reviving on the field the usages 
of ancient chivalry, declared that he himself, who had never 
been formally knighted, had now fairly won his spurs, and insisted 
on receiving that honour from the sword of Bayard ; partly, we 

She stooped her by the runnel's Where raged the war, a dark red 
side, tide, 
But in abhorrence backward Was curdling in the streamlet 
drew ; blue. — Scott, Marmion, vi. 30. 
For, oozing from the mountain ^ Et ne dira-t-on plus que les gens- 
wide, darmes sont lievres annes. — Francis^ 
Letter to his 3Iother. 



56 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1516. 

can liardly doubt, to disparage tlie Constable himself, by not pre- 
ferring him, and thus to gratify the revengeful and fatal enmity 
which his mother had already conceived against the most 
illustrious and most deserving of his subjects. 

The consequences of the victory were, indeed, more than im- 
portant ; they were decisive. That single day secured to Francis 
the whole of his objects. The Swiss, in haste, recrossed the 
mountains, there to repent at leisure their treachery and temerity : 
Milan opened its gates to Bourbon : the Duke Maximilian Sforza, 
who at first took refuge in the castle, had no resource but to 
surrender himself a few days later ; while the Pope, Leo X., not 
only confirmed the king in the Duchy, but restored to it the 
important cities of Parma and Piacentia, of which, not long before, 
he had made himself master. 

But such acquisitions, though made by valour, can only be 
retained by policy. And with either the foresight of a statesman 
or even the address of a politician Francis was but scantily 
endowed, while the arrogance of his nobles was more calculated 
to alienate friends than to conciliate either notorious enemies or 
reluctant subjects. Leo, whose concessions had only been meant 
to prevent the advances of the French into tlie southern provinces 
of Italy, no sooner saw that danger removed by the king's return 
to his own country, than he began to intrigue against him, and 
set on foot machinations to expel him from Lombardy also ; and 
when he died, as he did suddenly in December 1521, he had 
already seen Lautrec, Francis's governor of that province, in full 
reti-eat towards the Alps before Colonna, whom the citizens, in 
spite of the French garrison, had readmitted into Milan. His 
machinations were assisted in no trifling degree by the folly of 
Francis himself, and by his jealous resentment against Charles, 
not for any act of his own, but for having been preferred to him- 
self by the Electors of the Empire. In the year of Charles's 
accession to the throne of Spain, the treaty of Noyon had 
apparently not only terminated all existing differences between 
the two Crowns by a defensive and offensive alliance, but had 
prevented their revival by the stipulation that Charles should 
hereafter marry Francis's daughter, though the young princess 
was as yet in her cradle, and that a part of her dowry should be 
the renunciation by her father of those claims of the House of 
Anjou to the throne of Naples, which, till disavowed, might at 
any time become a pretext for a fresh war. The Emperor Maxi- 
milian, too, became a party to the treaty ; and, as a pledge of his 
sincerity, restored Verona to Venice. So that those who guided 
their anticipations of the future by a reference to solemn engage- 
ments rather than to the views and feelings of the contractio": 



A.D. 1516.] GENEEAL EONDNESS EO-R WAK. 57 

parlies might have fancied that a new era of universal peace was 
inaugurated. But, even if the feelings of amity expressed in this 
treaty had been ever so sincerely entertained when it was con- 
cluded, too many disturbing causes existed to allow any sanguine 
hope to be cherished that they would long be maintained without 
interruption. If the present more correct understanding of the 
interests of nations and the duties of rulers has laid down, as the 
fundamental maxim of international relations and policy, that 
peace is the natural and proper state of the world, always to be 
preserved except when some irresistible provocation has impelled 
an injured country to war, the maxim of the ages of which we 
are speaking, as of all those which had preceded them, was, on 
the contrary, that the natural state of every country was war with 
its neighbours, unless it were forbidden by some express treaty. 
All ranks, except the commercial class (and in many lands that 
class had as yet hardly any existence, in scarcely any had it 
any influence in the nationnl councils), equally cherished this 
most pernicious notion. To kings foreign conquest appeared the 
only means of increasing their own greatness ; to the nobles war 
presented the only means of acquiring glory ; and even among 
the lower classes, who necessarily composed the bulk of all armies, 
the most striving and enterprising spirits looked to war, not only 
as the means of present subsistence, but as offering the only 
prospect of laising themselves above their existing condition, by 
the acquisition of wealth from the pillnge of some fertile province 
or well-stored city, or the ransom of some high-born prisoner.^ 

"When such was the general Feeling, it was never dilficult to find 
or to make pi-etexts for gratifying it ; and especially was it easy 
in the case of princes, like Francis and Charles, whose dominions 
were contiguous in more than one quarter ; who had, or fancied 
themselves to have, many jarring or conflicting interests, and who 
were both of an age to listen more eagerly to the promptings of 
ambition than to the soberer dictates of prudence. Even the cir- 
cumstances under which the last war between the two nations had 
been terminated supplied both with motives for wishing to renew it. 
Francis was convinced that the battle of Ravenna had in reality 
placed the north of Italy at the mercy of France, and that the death 
of Gaston and the invasion of Picardy by Henry had alone pre- 
vented his predecessor from reaping the fruits of that brilliant 
victory : while Charles felt that a stain rested on the arms of 

1 Even the nobles were not indif- main qu'ils n'eussent enleve tout ce 

ferent to the chance of enriching qu'Us troiiverent propre a I'etre. JV 

themselves in this way. Even eighty gagnai bien 3,000 ecus, et toi;s mes 

years later Sully tells us, ' Une parde gens y tirent un butin trfes-conside- 

du fauxbourg fut pillee : nos soldats rable.' — Memoires de Sul/y, liv. iii. 

ne soitirent point de celle de St.-Ger- 40. 



58 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1519. 

Spain till the memory of that great oyerthrow was effaced by 
some subsequent triumph. While both were thus ready for, and 
secretly desirous of war, an event occurred which greatly em- 
bittered Francis's feelings towards Charles, and gave to the war, 
when it did break out, more of the character of personal animosity 
than had previously been witnessed. Charles, as has been 
mentioned, was grandson of the Emperor Maximilian, who, 
feeling the approaches of age, was desirous of obtaining for him, 
as the representative of his family, the election to the dignity of 
King of the Romans, which, though in itself merely an honorary 
title, would ensure to him the succession to the Empire when it 
should become vacant by his own death. While he was pro- 
ceeding in his canvass of the electors, he suddenly died, in 
January 1519 ; and Charles at once became a candidate for the 
Imperial throne, which had now been filled by his family for so 
many generations that it seemed almost to belong to them of 
right; and it may probably be taken for granted that he also 
would now have been elected without opposition, had he not been 
already King of Spain, and had not the greatness of the power 
which he enjoyed as such been calculated to awaken the jealousy 
of the electors, who had in general avoided placing over them- 
selves any prince in possession, from any other source, of power , 
which might render him, not only independent of, but even 
formidable to themselves.^ This feeling was as lively as ever ; 
but when the knowledge or suspicion of its existence led Francis 
to offer himself as Charles's competitor, he overlooked the self- 
evident fact that his position as King of France was an equal 
disqualification, while he had no German blood in his veins nor 
any connection with Germany which could influence any elector 
in his favour. We may pass over the appearance of our own 
King Henry in the field as a competitor altogether, since he was 
the last to put himself forward and the first to withdraw. The 
objections to Charles seemed so valid that at first the electors ^ 
unanimously passed him over; and six of them consented to offer 

* It should, however, be remem- poral sovereigns of tliflerent ranks — 

bercd that as yet Hungary and the King of Bohemia, the Count 

Bohemia were not united to Austria. Palatine, the Diike of Saxony, and 

These kingdoms first came to a prince the Marquis of Brandenburgh. In 

of tlie House of Austria in 1526, when the course of the next century it was 

Louis II., king of both countries, fell increased to nine, by the addition of 

in the battle of Mohacz, and was the Duke of Bavaria and the Dulte of 

succeeded by Ferdinand, the brother Hanover. But, according to some 

of Charles V., who was married to authors, the Duke of Bavaria was 

his sister. one of the original Electors, ard the 

2 The Electoral College at this time King of Bohemia was not. Accord- 
consisted of seven princes and eccle- ing to others, the elector Palatine 
Biastics : the Archbishops of Cologne, and the Duke of Bavaria had cue 
Treves, and Mayence, and four tern- vote between them. 



A.D. 1520.] CHARLES IS ELECTED ElVIPEEOK. 59 

tbe throne to tlie seventh Frederic, the Duke of Saxony. Frederic 
had already earned the honorable name of ' The Wise,' a title 
which he justified by the firm moderation with which he now 
refused a rank which, however shorn of much of its former 
power, was still the first in dignity among the monarchies of 
Christendom. Taking a statesman-like view of the state of Europe 
at the time, and especially of the great resources and ambition of 
the Sultan, Selim II., who was understood to be preparing a vast 
army to overrun the eastern provinces of the Empire, he con- 
sidered that the caution which, in ordinary times, forbad the 
election of too mighty a prince to the Imperial throne, should, at 
the existing crisis, yield to the necessity of choosing one able to 
bring a foreign force to the assistance of Germany ; that, therefore, 
the ability to dispose of the resources of Spain or France, instead 
of being a disqualification was, at the present moment, the greatest 
of recommendations ; and, both competitors being so far equal, 
he gave his own vote for Charles, as the better entitled to the 
vacant throne by his German blood and relationship to their 
former sovereign. His self-denying views prevailed : Charles 
was electedj but' the contest had converted the two candidates, in 
spite of their recent treaty, into implacable enemies. Francis 
had entered on his candidature with the most ostentatious pro- 
fessions of moderation. ' We are two gallants,' said he, 'courting 
the same mistress ; the most fortunate will succeed ; he who fails 
will have no excuse for ill-temper.' But he was incapable of 
acting up to the rule of conduct he had laid down. He was 
mortified beyond measure at one who was still a boy being pre- 
ferred to him who had done such mighty deeds at Marignan : he 
was indignant, resentful, revengeful. And Charles, on his part, 
was even more unreasonable. Success, which softens the heart 
of the magnanimous, had hardened his; his elation was such that 
he even devised a new title of courtesy or compliment for himself, 
and required his subjects to speak of him as His Majesty, when 
former monarchs had been content with the appellations of Grace 
or Highness ,■ and he spoke of the conduct of Francis in ofl'erino- 
himself as a candidate as insulting and injurious to himself; 
though nothing was more clear than that the competition was 
open to all Christendom, and that precedents were not want- 
ing for the honour having been attained by princes who had no 
kindred with Germany to recommend them. 

From the very moment of Charles's election then war was in- 
evitable ; and with as little delay as possible Francis commenced 
it, attacking Charles in two extremities of his dominions at once ; 
in NavaiTe in the south-west, and in the Netherlands in the north- 
east. But it was easy to foresee that the plains of northern 



60 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1521. 

Italy would be, as tliey had been before, the principal field of 
battle ; and the operations in the Pyrenees and the Low Conn- 
tries, as having had no effect whatever on the issue of the contest 
might have been passed over without mention, were not the 
former rendered memorable by the circumstance that to a wound 
received in the siege of Pampeluna by Ignatius Loyola, a Bis- 
cayan gentleman, is due the foundation of the Order of Jesuits : 
while the latter was illustrated by the most brilliant achievement 
of the celebrated Bayard ; who, having had the defence of the im- 
portant town of Mezieres entrusted to him, defended it, in spite of 
the weakness of its fortifications and the slenderness of its garrison, 
with such skill and prowess, that after a protracted siege the Im- 
perialist generals were forced to retire with no inconsiderable loss 
of honour. 

But (and the circumstances of this war singularly resemble 
those of the eventful campaign which has occupied the attention 
of the world during the past year) though Francis thus began the 
war, Charles was the better prepared for it. When the Emperor 
first heard of the invasion of his territories by the French armies, 
he professed the greatest surprise, and thanked God that ' it was 
not he who had commenced the war;' but now that it was begun, 
a very short time ' would decide whether he himself was to be a 
poor Emperor or his assailant a poor King of France;' but, in realitj'', 
he had for some time foreseen and had been providing for the 
rupture by forming alliances with Henry VIII., with the Pope, and 
with others of the Italian princes ; while, at the very same time, 
Francis was disarming himself, nay, even turning his own best 
resources against himself by foully injuring and irretrievably 
alienating the most renowned and able of all his subjects. 

Francis, having lest his father in his infancy, had been brought 
up chiefly by his mother, who, in consequence, had acquired great 
influence over him ; and there have been few women more wholly 
destitute of virtue, or whose vices have been more ruinous to every 
one with whom they have been brought into contact. She was 
a slave to every evil passion, shamelessly licentious, insatiably 
covetous, easily exasperated, when offended relentlessly vindictive 
and malignant ; and utterly devoid of truth and honesty in her 
dealings not only. with those whom she chose to consider her 
enemies, but even with her own son. And these odious qualities 
were the more dangerous because they were combined with very 
considerable abilities, with acute penetration, constant presence of 
mind, and a resolute courage and firmness amid difficulties and 
disasters. To confirm and retain her hold over the affections of 
Francis, she encouraged him in the open indulgence of the vices 
to which he was most inclined, so that the French histc^riaus 



L.D. 1522.J INJURIES OF EOURBON. 61 

attribute to lier example the prevalence of licentiousness from 
which of late years the French court had been unusually free, but 
TS'hich now returned in a flood which never abated till it over- 
spread the whole country, and bred that universal demoralisation 
which developed itself in the horrors of the first revolution, and of 
which the nation is still reaping the bitter fruit. 

The Duke of Bourbon, Constable of France, was pre-eminent not 
only for courage, military skill and capacitj^, but also for manly 
beauty ; and on the death of his wife, in 1521, Louisa, though 
many years older than he, conceived the idea of filling her place, 
and, when he solicited the hand of the Princess Renee, the younger 
daughter of the late king, who was herself well inclined to his 
proposals, prevailed on Francis to refuse his consent, and offered 
herself to his acceptance. Bourbon had the worst possible opinion 
of her. Her gallantries, indeed, which she had taken but little 
pains to keep secret, had made her the object of almost universal 
contempt ; and he was well aware also that the recent loss of 
Milan was to be attributed entirely to her faithlessness and rapacity 
in having appropriated to her own use a large sum of money which 
had been promised to Lautrec for the maintenance of his army. 
He was too proud and too honest to ally himself with such a 
woman ; and he was understood to have justified his refusal to his 
friends by comments on her conduct which their truth did not 
render less offensive to the subject of them. She resolved to re- 
venge herself by his ruin, and was aided in her design by a courtier 
whose influence over the king's mind was only second to her 
own ; Bonnivet, whose elder brother had been Francis's tutor, 
and whom Francis, after employing him on an embassy to England, 
had appointed Grand Admiral of France. Pie also was a man of 
great personal attractions, having, as such, the credit of being one 
of Louisa's most favoured lovers; and entertaining also a personal 
jealousy of the Constable, who was the lord paramount of a part of 
his estates, he gladly co-operated with his worthless mistress in 
undermining his credit with the king. During the war in the 
Netherlands, while Bayard was gaining immortal honour by the 
defence of Mezieres, Louisa and the Admiral had alreadj^, in their 
eagerness to insult the Constable, inflicted one grievous injury on 
France, by persuading the king to reject his advice to attack the 
Imperial army when iu a position on the Scheldt which must have 
ensured its destruction, and, in the subsequent operations, to en- 
trust to the Due d'Alengon the command of the vanguard, which, 
by the invariable rule and precedent of the service, belonged to 
Bourbon in virtue of his office. And the campaign was hardly 
over when Louisa endeavoured to strip him of his possessions, by 
putting forward on behalf of the crown claims to almost every one 



62 MODEKN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1523. 

of his estates, founded on a variety of legal quibbles, on the in- 
formality of wills, the invalidity or temporary character of the 
royal grants made to his or his wife's ancestors, and other equally 
futile and discreditable pretences; while at the same time she 
induced the king to suspend payment of the salary of his office, on 
the plea of the exhaustion of the royal treasury. 

The Constable saw that his ruin was resolved on : and, as it 
was evident that no one in France could protect him against so 
powerful an enemy, he sought safety by securing the friendship of 
foreign sovereigns, and opened negotiations with Charles, and also 
with Henry VIII., now in formal alliance with the Emperor, to 
whose aunt he was married. They knew his value, not only as 
the first soldier in Eui'ope, but as a prince whose dependents and 
partisans in France were so numerous as to enable him, when sup- 
ported by them, to raise up great troubles to Francis in his own 
dominions, and so to distract his attention in some degree from 
the measures necessary for the successful prosecution of the war 
which was on the point of breaking out. They undertook to add 
to Auvergne and the Bourbonnais, which already belonged to the 
duke, the great provinces of Dauphine and Provence, and to erect 
the whole into a kingdom, while Charles further promised him in 
marriage his sister Eleanor, the widowed Queen of Portugal. And 
he, in return, agreed to enter the Emperor's service, and to take 
the command of his army in Italy. Even the insulting ingratitude 
of the treatment he had receive'd cannot justify him in thus not 
only turning his arms against his native land, but plotting her dis- 
memberment for an aggrandisement of himself to which he could 
have no claim whatever. But the circumstances of France for the 
last century and a half had greatly weakened the feelings of loyalty 
.and patriotism in the hearts of the French nobles and princes. 
The League of the Public Good had in reality been a confederacy 
for the object of establishing the independence of many of the 
most important Duchies, and its success would have reduced 
Louis XL's dominions to a very narrow compass ; yet the 
princes who had been engaged in it had never been accounted 
traitors, nor had they been supposed to have tarnished their fame 
by their accession to it. Civil war was almost a recognised right 
of magnates of that class; ond certainly none of those who united 
against Louis XL had received such injuries from him as those 
with which Francis had permitted his mother to menace the Con- 
stable. Yet even at the last the duke hesitated, and solicited the 
intervention of the Bishop of Autun to prevail on the kins: to 
withdraw the suits which had been commenced in his name, and 
the most important of which he had just learned that the seivile 
judges of the time had decided against him ; and he authorised the 



A.D. 1523.] EOURBON JOINS THE EMPEROE. 63 

bishop, on the king-'s compliance with his request, to promise on 
his behalf the most sincere gratitude and most perfect fidelity. 
But the bishop was ai'rested on his road, and was refused access to 
the king ; and the Constable, seeing himself thus deprived of his 
last resource in France, and looking on his agreement with the 
Emperor as affording him the only prospect of safety, in the 
autumn of 1523 quitted his home secretly, taking, it is said, the 
same precaution which is attributed to Bruce, of having his horses 
shod backwards to conceal the direction of his flight, and escaped 
into Italy, where he was at once united with the great general, 
the Marquis of Pescara, in the coramand-in-chief of the Imperial 
army. He had been in the habit of quoting, with approval, the 
sentiment of a Spanish noble, that though no man of honour could 
be seduced from his duty by a bribe, to revenge an insult was 
itself the very first of duties.- He now prepared to carry out this 
maxim in his own practice : and he was not long in taking r. far 
more complete vengeance for his wrongs than he could have ex- 
pected. Francis had entrusted the command of his army in Lom- 
bardy to Bonnivet, whom Bourbon knew to be one chief promoter 
of the injustice with which he had been treated ; and that very 
winter he so completely out-generalled the Admiral and baffled all 
his plans, that Bonnivet was forced to evacuate Lombardy, and, 
badly wounded himself, to lead back his army into France ; Bour- 
bon pursuing him on his retreat, and defeating him in frequent 
skiruiishes, in one of which the celebrated Bayard, who, after 
Bonnivet was disabled, had the command of the rear-guard, re- 
ceived his death wound. It is related that Bourbon, who esteemed 
the gallant knight as he deserved, came up while he was dying, 
and expressed the concern which, no doubt, he sincerely felt at his 
state. 'Pity not me,' said the hero, 'I am dying as an honest 
man should die. I have rather reason to pity you, when I see you 
thus in arms against your king, your country, and your oath.' 
His wound was too severe to allow him to be removed from the 
spot where he fell ; nor, amid the confusion of a field of battle and 
of a disastrous retreat, could any priest be found to administer to 
him the rites of the Church. To comply with its ordinances to the 
utmost of his power, he confessed himself to one of his friends ; and 
then, holding up before his eyes the hilt of his sword which repre- 
sented a cross, he continued to pray till he expired, honoured and 
regretted by both armies, and leaving a name which has become a 
proverb for every chivalrous virtue. 

Bourbon may be almost said to have triumphed over his new 
friends as well as over his foes. Charles, flushed with success, 
would not content himself with expelling the French from Italy ; 
bat, giving the Marquis of Pescara the undivided command, in 



4 



64 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1525. 

order apparently to avoid placing BourlDon in the invidious posi- 
tion of an invader of his native land, lie ordered him to enter 
France and besiege Marseilles. Bourbon strongly remonstrated 
against the measure ; and the soundness of his objections to it was 
vindicated by its complete failure. In truth, in invading France 
the Emperor was overstraining his resources. The Empire was a 
sovereignty of more dignity than wealth. His gi-andfather and 
predecessor had been generally known as Maximilian the Money- 
less ; and America had not yet begun to pour her treasures into 
the lap of Spain. As yet, therefore, he was rather encumbered 
than enriched by the extent of his possessions ; and not only was 
the army, with which he now pursued the French, inadequate to 
the siege of so large a city as Marseilles, but he was unable to 
supply it with the necessary stores ; while Francis, the moment he 
regained his own territories, was able to recruit his army, and 
even to place it on a better footing than that of the previous cam- 
paign. Unhappily for himself, he repeated the error of his rival. 
As Charles had pursued him into France, so he now, disdaining to 
be satisfied at delivering his own dominions from the invader, re- 
taliated by pursuing him into Italy ; and, under the fatal influence 
of Bonnivet, once more recrossed the Alps, regardless of the fact 
that neither of his predecessors had been able to retain their hold 
on that countiy. His lirst onset, indeed, was crowned with 
success, as theirs had generally been crowned. He at once re- 
covered Milan ; but the ditference between ability and rashness 
was never more clearly shown than it was by the occurrences of 
the few weeks which ensued. Francis acted in all matters by the 
advice of Bonnivet, now fully recovered from his wound, and who 
iadeed had persuaded him to renew the invasion of Lombardy 
when all his wisest councillors had urged him to be contented with 
ha^'ing repelled the foreigners from Marseilles. Bourbon had 
again become the chief commander of Charles's force ; and, as it 
was very inferior in numbers to the French, and was also in great 
disorder for want of pay and supplies, he raised a large sum of 
money by the sale of his jewels and other means, hastened into 
Germany, where he quickly collected a reinforcement of 10,000 
men eager to serve under so renowned a captain, and, at the be- 
ginning of 1525 rejoined Pescara, who had not been able to prevent 
Francis from investing Pavia. 
/ Pavia was a city of great importance, lying on the Ticino, and 
commanding all the resources of the most fertile district of the 
north of Italy. As such it was strongly fortified; and Charles 
had entrusted its defence to one of his most skilful and resolute 
officers, Antonio de Leyva. To attack such a place in the middle 
of winter seemed the height of imprudence to all Francis's generals^ 



A.D. 1525.] BOURBON MAECHES TOWARDS PAYIA. C)5 

but Bonnivet. But lie had his master's ear too completely for 
any other advice to be listened to ; and at first Francis seemed to 
have sufficient cause to congratulate himself on having adopted 
his plans, when Clement VII., who had lately succeeded to the 
Popedom, timid both as a man and a politician, concluded a 
treaty with him, by which he renounced the alliance which his 
predecessor had contracted with the Emperor ; and, binding him- 
self to a strict neutrality for the future, induced the Venetians also 
to enter into a similar engagement. The return of Bourbon at tlio 
head of his newly levied troops to the scene of action in a moment 
changed the whole face of affairs. Though the Imperialists were 
still inferior in numbers, they at once resumed the offensive ; while 
Francis, though aware of Bourbon's movements, could not be 
prevailed on to pay the slightest attention to his army,^ or to any 
kind of business, but gave himself up wholly to dissipation ; the 
anticipation of which is indeed said to have been one principal ob- 
ject of his original attempt upon Milan ; and he entrusted tlie entire 
management of all his affairs to Bonnivet, who, like himself, was 
brave in action, and like himself also, except at such moments, 
wholly devoted to pleasure. The consequence was, that the 
Imperial troops gained the advantage in several trivial actions, as 
well as in one of greater importance, in which they cut off an 
entire French division of 4,000 men. A few days afterwards, a 
large body of Swiss infantry were recalled by the authorities of 
their own Cantons to defend them from an invasion which they 
apprehended on the side of Germany ; and these reductions, 
before the end of February, brought the two armies to an equality 
in point of numbers, each consisting of about 27,000 men. Having 
no longer the fear of being outnumbered, Bourbon resolved on 
decisive operations. Ever since his arrival, at the end of January, 
he had been diligently training his new levies to act in unison 
with Pescara's veterans. The actions which had taken place, 
though trivial in themselves, had been very valuable, as leading the 
different kinds of force to feel confidence in each other ; and at last, 
on the twent^'-fourth of February 1525, he and Pescara, the two hav- 
ing something like a joint command, thought the time was come to 
make a resolute attempt to force the French trenches and deliver 
the city. A large space of open park-like ground lay between the 
French lines and the walls of Pavia; and the Imperial generals 
resolved to cross this plain before daybreak, in the hope either to 

1 'Risedevailpesodelgovemo dell' gravi, dispregiati tutti glialtri Capi- 

esercito nell' Ammiraglio. II Re tani, siconsigliava con lui.' — Guicci' 

consumendo la maggior parte del ardini, Ann. 1526, viii. 138 ; London 

tempo, o in ozio, o in piaceri vani, Ed. 1821. 
ne amniettendo faccende o pensieri 



66 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1525. 

reach tlie city gates without being perceived, or, if they should he 
discovered, to lure the enemy out of their entrenchments to 
ground where they might fight on equal terms, if not at advantage. 
The French sentries were too vigilant to he surprised. They gave 
the alarm ; and the heads of the Imperial columns had scarcely 
done more than enter on the plain before their line was swept with 
fatal effect by the French batteries, which were greatly superior 
to their own artillery. In a few minutes numbers were struck 
down. To save his men, the Marquis de Guasto, the leader of the 
advanced guard, deployed them into open order, and bade them 
cross the plain at a run. Francis, who was watching the opera- 
tions on horseback, mistook the manoeuvre for flight. * See,' said 
he to his staff, ' they are flying ; let us charge.' ' To the charge ! ' 
responded Bonnivet and a score of other courtiers as brave and as 
imskilful as king or admiral. At the word the whole of the 
French cavalry dashed forward, and thrust themselves between 
their own batteries and the Imperial brigades which those batteries 
had been mowing down, and which, so perfect was their discipline, 
in a moment closed up and received their assailants with a heavy 
iire of musketry, which emptied many a saddle. The onset of the 
French had been too impetuous for such a check not to throw 
them into utter confusion. While they were trying to disengage 
themselves from Guasto's division^ with which they had become 
entangled, Pescara attacked them on one flank, Bourbon on the 
other, and de Leyva, sallying out at the head of a strong brigade 
of the garrison, fell upon their rear. There was no division in his 
army on which Francis justly placed more reliance than one con- 
sisting of 6,000 Swiss, under the command of John de Diesbach, 
the honest Bernese captain who, nine years before, had refused to 
join in the treacherous attack on Bufialoro which led to the battle 
of Marignan ; but he was now killed by a chance shot ; and, on 
seeing him fall, his troops were seized with a sudden panic. They 
fled, and their flight uncovered the French right wing, which was 
pierced in a moment by Bourbon himself, both its generals being 
taken ; and thus, in less than an hour from the firing of the first 
gun, the battle was irretrievably lost. Bonnivet in despair plunged 
into the thickest of the fight and was slain. Many others, the 
noblest and most renowned of the French warriors. La Palisse, 
Lescure, de la Tremouille, though not, like him, courting death, 
met a similar fate ; and if fearless exposure of his life, and personal 
prowess, displayed at the cost of many a foe who fell before his 
sword,^ could have ensured the destruction of one who had no 

Et, si fata fuissent 
Ut caderem, meruisse nianu. — yE"?j. ii. 434. 
Witness, ye heav'ns, I live not by my fault, 
I strove to have deserved the death I sought. — Dryden's Tram 



A.D. 1525.] THE BATTLE OF PAVIA. 67 

regard for his own safety, Francis himself would not have survived 
to deplore the defeat of which his own rashness had been the chief 
cause. Yet he seemed to bear a charmed life, till his horse was 
killed under him while he was entangled among a band of car- 
bineers in the very thickest of the battle ; and as his person was 
unknown to those among whom he fell, he might have shared the 
same fate had it not been for the richness of his armour and the 
order of knighthood which he wore, and which seemed to mark 
him out as a person from whom a splendid ransom might be 
extorted. The next minute M. Pomperan, one of Bourbon's 
most trusted ofncers, came to the spot. He of course recognised 
the king, of whose rank his captors were as yet ignorant, and begged 
him to surrender to the Constable, who was at no great distance ; 
but Francis could not bear thus to humble himself to his own 
rebellious subject, and asked "for Lannoy, the Viceroy of Naples. 
He was sent for, and at once hastened to the spot ; and it was 
well that so powerful a leader was at hand, for the carbineers 
were beginning to quarrel over the division of the king's spoils, 
and there had been instances in these wars of such disputes being 
settled by the slaughter of the prisoner ; but Lannoy, approaching 
the fallen monarch with great respect, protected him from such a 
danger. Francis gave up his sword ; and the intelligence of his 
capture, which was soon spread through both armies, terminated 
the battle : though many of the French perished afterwards, being 
drowned in the Ticino, which in their panic they tried to swim, 
and which was swollen with so heavy a flood as to be totally im- 



Such a victory, crowned by such a capture, could not fail to be 
decisive of the war. But the very greatness of the triumph, as 
has happened in other instances, bred ill-will between those who 
had achieved it. Lannoy, who had had the honour of receiving 
the king's sword, had contributed but little to the victory ; and 
Bourbon and Pescara were extremely indignant when he proceeded 
to conduct his prisoner to one of his own fortresses, and shortly 
afterwards sent him by sea to Spain. Sforza, duke of Milan, toe 
was greatly offended with the Emperor himself. The great battle 
had restored him to his dominions ; but Charles had clogged hia 
reoccupation of them with conditions calculated to keep him in 
a state of complete dependency on himself; and his chancellor 
Morone, a man of singular capacity for political intrigue, which 
the Italian statesmen of that day made their peculiar stud^, so 
worked on Pescara's anger against Lannoy, that he induced the 
marquis to enter into a conspiracy against the Emperor, with the 
object of expelling the Spaniards from both Lombardy and 
Naples : a desigTi which, as Pescara was an Italian by birth, 



68 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1526. 

assumed in his eyes, under the artful persuasion of Morone, the 
character of patriotism. 

Charles too, himself, was not altogether easy. He must soon 
have discovered (as was said of himself at a later period of his 
reign, when the Saxon prince apparently had it in his power to 
capture him and forebore to do so) that some birds were too big 
for cages. His first impression was, that he should be able to 
derive the greatest advantages conceivable from having such a 
prisoner in his power ; that he should be able to dictate peace on 
his own terms, and not only to compel the restoration of Burgundy, 
which Louis XI. had so unjustly wrested from his grandmother, 
but to exact satisfaction for all his allies, a kingdom for Bourbon, 
and great concessions to Henry VIII., who was nominally a 
member of the League against Francis, though he had contributed 
no aid to the campaign. But he soon found not only that people 
in general were beginning to protest against the exorbitanc}^ of 
his demands, and that Francis, who positively refused compliance 
with them, was thrown into so severe a fever by the anxieties 
attendant on his situation that hi^ life was in danger ; but that 
Henry himself, who was incapable of pursuing any scheme of 
policy with steadiness, was inclined to view the great increase of 
his glory and power with a jealousy which entirely superseded - 
his desire to share in the results of his victory, and was beginning 
secretly to negotiate with Louise, who was acting as Regent of 
France during her son's captivity. Pescara, too, who repented of 
his meditated treason and confessed it to him, contributed to alarm 
him by the very revelation, which showed him how ready even 
those powers in Italy, whom he looked upon as most closely bound 
to him, were to unite against him. And these considerations led 
him, at the commencement of the next year, to conclude a treaty 
with Francis, known as the Treaty of Madrid j by which he agreed 
to release him, though he could not forbear to gratifj^ his pride by 
imposing conditions oa him which it is impossible that he should 
ever have deceived himself into expecting to be carried out.^ 

One of the articles provided for the renunciation by the French 
king of all claim to dominion in any part of Italy. But, though 
this stipulation seemed to be calculated to give peace to that fair 
peninsula, it in fact contributed to bring on it greater sufferings 
than ever. There never was an age when that gift of beauty 
without strength, which Filicaja so poetically laments, was more 
fatal to her than this age, when French, Germans, Spaniards, and 

1 Francis was to restore Burgundy; suffered ; to renounce his claims to 

to reinstate Bourbon in all his posses- any possessions in Italj', or to any 

sions, and to make him ample repar- rights over Flanders or Artois, &c. 
ation for all the injuries he had 



A D. 1526.] DIFFICULTIES OF BOURBON. , G9 

Swiss, all made her their battle-field ; and slie was not only power- 
less to help herself, but found every effiirt which she made for her 
deliverance only add to the weight of her chains. The constant 
object of the policy of all true Italians at this time was to expel 
all foreigners from Italy. And when, therefore, Francis began to 
cast about for allies who should support him in the non-fulfilment 
of the treaty to which he owed his liberty, he found the Pope and 
the Venetians eager to join him. The Pope at once absolved him 
from all obligations to Charles ; he and the Venetians engaged to 
join him in raising an army to act against the Emperor in Italy; 
and with singular inconsistency these allies, whose professed object 
was to keep Italy for the Italians alone, purchased the alliance of 
Henry VIII. by promising him a principality in the kingdom of 
Naples, after they should have driven the Spaniards out of it. 

But it was not very safe to announce such designs against a 
prince like Charles, whose natural arrogance was so inflamed by 
success, without' greater means of executing them than were at 
the disposal of the new allies. And though the army which they 
undertook to raise was only fixed at 35,000 men, to collect such a 
force was quite beyond their power. Henry's dominions were too 
remote for him to be able to give more than his name to the League. 
The resom-ces of Francis were for the moment exhausted, while 
the military power of the Pope was utterly insignificant. But, 
though the League was impotent to injure the Emperor, it was 
sufiicient to provoke him ; and his wrath fell heavily on those of 
the allies whose purpose the confederacy was intended to serve. 
Looking on Sforza as, through the arts of Morone, the principal 
author of the League against him, the Holy League, as it was 
called after the accession of the Pope was secured, he selected 
him for his first attack. Pescara had lately died, after a short 
illness; and Bourbon, who was now sole commander of the 
Imperial army, had but little difficulty in capturing Milan, which, 
with the duchy, Charles promised to confer on him as a reward 
for his services ; while a party was even formed among the Roman 
princes to depose Clement and to elect, one of the Colonna family 
in his stead. But a retribution of a different and more shameful 
kind was to fall on the Pope. 

Bourbon, though victorious, was far from being at his ease, if 
indeed his successes, by raising the arrogance and expectations of 
his troops, did not increase his difficulties. His military chest was 
empty; and when, in the autumn of 1526, the Emperor sent him a 
reinforcement of German troops, under the command of a leader 
named Frundsberg, who, though of noble birth, was little better 
than a freebooter, living by war and rapine, even these men had 
received no pay, and soon became clamorous fOr the money wliich 



70 , MODERN HISTORY^ [a.d. 1527. 

had been promised them. Bourbon was driven to raise money by 
expedients from which his sense of justice and his sense of policy 
(and no man of that day was more just or more politic) alike 
revolted. He levied heavy contributions on the citizens of Milan, 
compelling them, in some instances, even to give up the plate out 
of their churches; he sold a pardon to Morone, who had been 
condemned to death by the judges, whom, on the reduction of 
Milan, the Emperor had appointed to try him for his treachery. 
But such resources were but scanty, and could manifestly only 
afford a momentary relief. The duke saw no resource for keeping 
his force together, except that of occupying some Italian province 
and drawing its subsistence from that; and, as the Pope had 
already begun to carry out some of the views of the Holy League, 
by aiding an expedition of the French against the kingdom ot 
Naples, he selected tlie States of the Church as the object of his 
attack, and in March 1527, began to descend into the centre of 
Italy at the head of 25,000 tried veterans. Clement, who was 
destitute of courage or resolution, and whose sagacity at best took 
no higher form than that of cunning, was terrified into utter help- 
lessness by the intelligence of his approach. The only device 
which he could think of was to conclude with Lannoy, as the 
Imperial Viceroy of Naples, a treaty by which he deserted the 
Holy League, and promised to furnish large sums for the payment 
of the Imperial army, while Lannoy, in return, agreed to prohibit 
the further advance of Bourbon. But the duke's command was 
independent of the kingdom of Naples ; and Bourbon, paying no 
attention whatever to the Viceroy's despatch, pushed rapidly 
forward, and on the fourth of May reached the suburbs of Rome. 

That most renowned of cities, the ancient mistress of the world, 
and the modern metropolis of Christendom, had now enjoyed fin 
immunity from hostile attack for so- many generations, during 
which a continued stream of costly offerings had flowed in from 
the liberality or superstition of worshippers of all ranks and all 
countries, that the wealth which she contained was commonly 
reputed to be almost beyond the power of enumeration ; and the 
duke, convinced that he could perform no service which would 
be more acceptable to his Imperial master than that of inflicting a 
memorable chastisement on the treacherous Pope, under circum- 
stances which might enable Charles to avow his ignorance of such 
a design, resolved, by the rapidity of his movements, to give no 
time for the arrival of any orders which might embarrass or im- 
pede them, and issued orders for an assault of the fortifications on 
the next morning. Had the garrison of Rome been able to make 
a stout resistance, the attempt might probably have proved the 



A.D. 1527.] TUE SACK OF ROME. 71 

destruction of tbe army which made it ; for Bourbon himself, wlio 
was in person leading one division to the assault, was among the 
first to fall. His men were wavering under a heavy fire which a 
Swiss battalion that formed part of the garrison directed against 
it, and the duke, whiie exerting himself to rally them, and plant- 
ing a ladder with his own hand against the walls, was struck 
down by a mortal wound from an arquebuss, which the celebrated 
artist, Benvenuto Cellini, boasts of having fired. Even amid the 
pangs of death he did not lose his presence of mind ; but bade his 
followers throw a cloak over his face that his loss might not be 
perceived by the army in general. But it could not be concealed, 
though, instead of disheartening them as he had feared, it only 
stimulated them to greater efforts to avenge him. And the gar- 
rison, though still fighting valiantly, had no leader. Clement had 
quarrelled irreconcilably with the Colonnas, the only men of 
military skill among the Roman rulers, and his only hope of safety 
lay in prostrating himself before the altar of St. Peter's to invoke 
the assistance of his patron saint. But now that Bourbon was 
dead, his troops cared little for saints or altars. Frundsberg had 
died almost immediately after his junction with Bourbon ,• so 
that the whole army was now absolutely without a commander, 
which, in this instance, meant without restraint. After a brief 
conflict, they scaled the walls, overpowered the garrison, and 
plunged into the city with the fury of brigands resolved to in- 
demnify themselves for all their past disappointments, labours, and 
dangers, at the expense of the wretched citizens. Before evenin g 
Philibert, Prince of Orange, assumed the command ; but he, too, 
was killed in some of the subsequent operations ; and, even while 
he lived, he was utterly unable to curb the ferocious lawlessness 
of his soldiers. Plunder was their principal object ; in the acquisi- 
tion of which they spared not even the holiest places, but pillaged 
the churches and the altars with as much indifierence as private 
houses ; nay, with more eagerness on account of the great value of 
the treasures which so many of them displayed ; while no kind of 
outi-age was deemed too horrible to be inflicted on their victims 
after they had stripped them of their wealth : all that lust, all 
that cruelty could devise was practised on the unhappy citizens ; 
no age, no sex, was spared. Time itself failed to satiate or to 
weary the conquerors' barbarity; and during the many months 
that their occupation of the city lasted, the oppression of the in- 
habitants continued with scarcely interruption or abatement. ' It 
would be impossible,' says Guicciardini, ' not merely to relate, 
but even to conceive the calamities which now fell on the 
city; and equally impossible to estimate the enormous amount 
of the plunder which enriched the spoilers.' And the great 



72 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1529. 

historian, ■who has given us the fullest account that our own 
language presents of these transactions, does not scruple to affirm 
that 'Rome, though taken several different times by the Northern 
nations, who overran the Empire in the fifth and sixth centuries, 
was never treated with so much cruelty by the barbarous and 
heathen Huns, Vandals, and Goths, as now by the bigoted subjects 
of a Catholic monarch.' 

Pope Clement escaped from the first fury of the assault into the 
castle of St. Angelo. But the fortress, though strong in itself, was 
ill supplied with provisions; and, after a siege of a few weeks, 
which however was too long for his endurance, he was compelled 
to surrender. 

The possession of such a prisoner would have been no small 
embaiTassment to many a captor. It might have been expected to 
be especially perplexing to Charles, who at all times desired to be 
regarded as a devout son of the Church and of the Holy Father ; 
a character which seemed somewhat inconsistent with the deten- 
sion of Clement in captivity. But though he wished to avoid 
the odium of such conduct, he was also a statesman ; and, as 
such, had no inclination to renounce the advantage to be derived 
from the power of dictating his own terms to a potentate who 
still arrogated a superiority over all other sovereigns. And he 
had a strange faith in the value of professions. It is not pro- 
bable that Bourbon had originally received any authority from 
him to descend from Lombardy on Home. And Charles's first 
step, on hearing of his assault of the city and of his death, was to 
disown his enterprise ; his second, when he heard that Clement 
was his prisoner, was to put himself and his court into mourning, 
and to order prayers to be offered up in every church in Spain for 
his Holiness's liberty. It was, in fact, praying to himself. But 
as the accomplishment of their prayers is said at times to have 
been mischievous to the suppliants, he apparently thought it 
became him to be very cautious how, by granting their supplica- 
tiiBUS, he brought disaster on the present worshippers ; and did 
not grant their entreaties till he had exacted from the captive 
terms of extreme severity, and of more durable advantage to 
himself than the payment of any conceivable ransom. At the 
moment of his capture Clement had been compelled not only to 
pay a large sum of money to the army which had taken him, but 
to cede some of his strongest fortresses ; and now he was required 
not only to pay a very large sum of money in addition, but to 
grant the Emperor a variety of ecclesiastical dues and privileges 
in Spain : a concession to which nothing but a craving for his 
liberty could have induced any Pope to consent. Clement, how- 
ever, agreed to all that was required of him; and, at the end of 
about six months from his capture, Charles sent orders to release 



A.D. 1537.] THE TREATY OF CAMBRAl. 73 

him ; though he did not yet withdraw his army from Eome, which 
he designed to occupy till he should have received all the money 
which the Pope had agreed to pay by instalments due at stated 
intervals. 

Throughout the reigns of both Charles and Francis there was 
repeated war between the two countries. It broke out again the 
very next year; and though in 1529 all differences between the 
sovereigns seemed to be finally removed by the Treaty of Cambrai, 
by which Charles, for 2,000,000 of crowns, consented to abandon 
the claim which the Treaty of Madrid had given him on Burgundy, 
and Francis renounced for ever his pretensions to any dominion in 
Italy, it is probable that neither prince expected that peace pur- 
chased by these mutual cessions to be more durable than it proved. 
Indeed, it could hardly have been expected that the personal dis- 
grace of his captivity should not have left a permanent soreness in 
the mind of Francis. He even sent Charles a challenge to single 
combat, an invitation which the Emperor professed a willingness 
to accept ; and which, if it had been fought out, would have supplied 
historians with incidents still stranger than any that are presented 
to them by the age, fruitful as we have seen it to be in striking 
events. Eight years afterwards the Emperor became in his tarn 
the challenger, proposing to stake the Duchy of Milan against 
Burgundy on the issue of the combat; but his challenge was 
encumbered with so many conditions and alternatives as to compel 
the inference that it was a mere bravado, which he never intended 
to have any practical result, but which was only meant to give 
him the appearance of having had the general war which ensued 
forced upon him. So great, even in that day, was the elasticity 
of the French resources, that when war did again break out its 
renewal was not unfavorable to the French arms. A young prince, 
the Count d'Enghien, the first to win any especial renown of a 
family afterwards prolific of brave soldiers, by his victory at 
Cerisoles in Piedmont did much to retrieve the fame of the French 
arms. But these campaigns present no features of remarkable or 
enduring interest ; and, after such events as the capture of a King 
and of a Pope, and the sack of the metropolis of Christendom, one 
can hardly condescend to dwell on minute details of war after war, 
which necessarily resemble one another in their general features, 
and of which the importance is so transitory that the memory of 
each is effaced by that which follows it. There were, indeed, other 
transactions affecting both sovereigns and both nations of universal 
and lasting interest; and of these we shall next proceed to 
Bpeak.^ 

1 The authorities for the preceding Charles V., Coxe's House of Austria, 

chapter are the Histories of France Brantome's 3femoh-s, and Guicciar- 

alreadv mentioned, Robertson's dini's Istoria d'ltalia. 

5 



74 MODERN HISTORY. U-d. 1517. 



CHAPTER IV. 
A.D. 1517—1558. 

IF the purposes and conduct of kings and statesmen were in- 
fluenced by events in a degree at all proportioned to their 
real magnitude, it would seem strange that Charles and Francis 
should have been so constantly at war, since on one matter, which 
each professed to regard as of fiir higher moment than any object 
of personal ambition, they were completely agreed. In the very 
first years of their reigns, before a single difference had arisen to 
disturb the amity which they had pledged to each other at Noyon, 
a blow was struck at the supremacy which, during the preceding 
five centuries, the Pope had gradually established all over the 
nations of Christian Europe, and at the continued submission to 
many of the doctrines and practices which he had ' successively 
introduced into the Church ; and a religious movement was set on 
foot, the most important tliat had attracted the attention of the 
world since the original introduction of Christianity. It was not 
an entirely new agitation. A century and a half before, Wicklifie 
in England had denounced tlie very same Pffpal innovations that 
were now attacked. He had been followed by Huss in Bohemia ; 
and even before his time, as we learn from Dante/ and after him, 
as is proved by the history of Savonarola," Italy itself had produced 
many bold and enquiring spirits, who, even in what might be re- 
garded as the Pope's peculiar territory, were not afraid to expose 
the manifold corruptions which they beheld among their fellows, 
and which they traced to and connected with the steady progress and 
development of the spiritual and temporal ambition of the Roman 
Pontiff. But Wicklifie and Huss were in advance of their age. 
The bold warfare which they undertook to wage against inveterate 
abuses required a more general knowledge of those abuses than 

' Ed egli ame, 'Qui son gli eresiarche ' The arch-heretics are here, accom- 
Co' lor seguaci d' ogni setta, e molto panied 

Pill, che non credi, son le tombe By every sect their followei.s, and 

carche.' — Inferno, c. ix. 187. much moie 

Than thou believ'st the tombs are 
He answer thus returned, freighted.' — Cary's Transluiion. 

2 Burnt at Florence in 1498, 



A.D. 1517.] EEFOEIIATION IN THE JVUDDLE AGES. 75 

could be disseminated wliile those who assailed them had no 
means of inspiring others with their sentiments beyond sermons 
and harangues, of which the number of hearers must unavoidably 
be limited, or treatises few and brief, copied out by the slow 
hand of amanuenses, whose circulation was necessarily more con- 
fined still. Nothing but the printing-press could make successful 
head against a system which appealed alike to the interests of 
both the dominant and the subject classes, of the priests and of 
the laity ; against practices dear to the one as tlie source of profit, 
to the others as sanctioned by time-honoured custom and early 
association ; and against doctrines, many of which admitted of 
advocacy which, if far from cogent, had yet a plausible appearance, 
while those which were most indefensible on any ground drawn 
from Scripture or from reason, were not the less acceptable to the 
majority of all ranks, to whom it was easier to purchase absolution 
for their vices than to abandon them. But, in the century which 
elapsed after the unhappy Huss ^ expiated his trust in the good 
faith of Pope and Emperor at the stake, that mightiest engine of 
civilisation had been brought to perfection. Writings, which pre- 
viously could only be circulated slowly among the few, were now 
issued, with a rapidity which seemed marvellous to the manj'', to 
all who desired them. The printing-press enabled the disputants 
to appeal from the authority of one to the reason of all ; substituting 
argumentative scrutiny for superstitious acceptance. And the 
new weapon was hardly turned out in completeness when a new 
combatant descended into the field to prove its efficacy. 

The occasion which specially called him forth was not imcon- 
nected with the wars which have been mentioned in the first 
chapter, A few months after the battle of Ravenna Pope Julias 
died, and was succeeded by Leo X., who, though of a less lofty 
ambition and less warlike disposition than his two predecessors, 
was equally inclined to a lavish expenditure ; and, finding that 
their martial policy and enterprises had left the Papal treasury in 
a state of great exhaustion, he at once began to cast about for some 
device to replenish it; and, with this view, revived the old expe- 
dient of the sale of indulgences. The agent who was entrusted 
with the management of the trafiic in Saxony, Tetzel, a Dominican 
friar, was fitter to be a recipient than a dispenser of pardons, being 
a man of notorious dissoluteness, which he was at no pains either 
to restrain or to conceal, even while thus engaged in an employment 
which certainly required a more than ordinary sanctity to recom- 
mend it. 'J'he general disapprobation with which the man was 
regarded naturally reacted on his work ; and the Germans, a re- 

1 Huss was burnt at Constance, in 1415. Luther first published his 
theses against indul'.cences in 1517. 



76 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1517. 

fleeting people, were beginning to ask themselves whetlier any 
immunities or privileges could have real value which were dis- 
pensed, apparently by no rule but that of his own discretion, by so 
indiscreet and corrupt a steward ; when the doubts, which those 
who felt them Avere as yet confining to their own bosoms, at the 
beginning of 1517, found audible expression in the bold language 
of the Professor of Theology in the recently founded University of 
Wittenburg. 

Martin Luther, for that was' the professor's name, was, like 
Tftzel, a friar, though belonging to a different order, that of St. 
Augustine ; and, though not yet thirty-three years of age, he had 
already established a high character for learning, as well as for 
devotion, a feeling which had been deepened into enthusiasm in 
his mind by the death of a friend who was killed by his side ii. a 
thunderstorm. He was employed in his academical duties at 
"Wittenburg when Tetzel arrived there in the prosecution of his 
business as a seller of these indulgences ; and the inconsistency ot" 
the Dominican's character with his occupation led Luther to ex- 
amine the foimdation of the argument on which the theory of 
indulgences rested. He soon convinced himself that it was not 
only not countenanced by, but that it was at direct variance with, 
the Word of God ; and, having formed that opinion, he began to 
announce it in his lecture-room and from his pulpit with an energy 
and force of reasoning which attracted a numerous body of hearers, 
and very soon a band of resolute disciples. He published treatises 
on the subject, which, though Tetzel and others, interested in the 
sale of indulgences, replied to them, made many converts, not 
only in Germany, but in other countries; while even his own 
sovereign, Frederic, Elector of Saxony, if he did not openly declare 
his adherence to his doctrines, secretly encouraged him in the 
promulgation of them, from a desire to arrest the drain on the 
resources of his dominions which was caused by Tetzel's trans- 
mission to Rome of the proceeds of the indulgences. 

Presently Leo himself, alarmed for his resources, descended into 
the arena, not, however, condescending to employ argument, but 
with a voice of absolute authority, issuing two Bulls : the first of 
which, in general terms, required from all implicit obedience- to the 
Church ; the second, published at Midsummer 1520, condemned 
Luther himself and all his writings, excommunicating him if he 
did not recant his errors within sixty days, and even visiting all 
who should read his books, or have a copy of them in their pos- 
session, with a similar penalty. To the first Luther replied by an 
appeal to a General Council, which even the Pope himself could 
not deny to be the legitimate tribunal for determining and pro- 
ouncing the doctrine of the Catholic Church on any subject. 



A.D. 1517.] COIVIMENCEMENT Oi' THE EEFOEJLiTION. 77 

The second, aa it was, in fact, a condemnation of himself without 
trial, to a death of lingering torture, if he should full into his 
adversaries' hands, he met by a still bolder answer, by an un- 
precedented act of open defiance. He denounced the Pope as 
Antichrist ; and, assembling all the professors and students of 
Wittenburg, in the presence of them and the great bulk of the 
citizens, he publicly committed the Pope's Bull with the volumes 
of the Canon Law, to which alone the Papal advocates appealed, 
to the flames ; and endeavoured to enlist the princes of Europe in 
general on his side, by a fresh treatise, in which he demonstrated 
the iucompatability of the pretensions advanced by the Popes to 
imiversal dominion with the legitimate authority and independence 
of each sovereign in his own territory. 

It is from this act of Luther that we may date the commence- 
ment of the Reformation. Hitherto, while protesting against in- 
dulgences, he had professed the greatest respect for the Pope, and 
had even written him one letter couched in the most reverential 
language, and promising unreserved obedience to his will; but 
he now by this public insult for ever renounced his allegiance to 
him ; made the breach between himself and Rome irreparable ; 
and staked his personal safety on the result of the conflict. And 
we must pause for a moment to contemplate the magnitude of the 
issues involved in the contest. 

In the first place, not only religious, but civil liberty was at 
stake. Religious liberty, because the question really was, whether 
the commands of despotic authority, which did not condescend to 
support their propriety nor to justify their promulgation by argu- 
ment, were to be obeyed without examination, so that mankind, 
though endowed with the faculty of reason, was to be forbidden 
to exercise it on the most important of all subjects; or whether 
the claims of the Pope to miiversal submission were to be tested 
by a reference to Scripture, and only so far admitted as they were 
found to be in conformity with the Word of God. Civil liberty, 
because with that the pretensions advanced by the Pope to a 
supremacy over all temporal princes, and to a power of dispensing 
with the observance of any particular law in any country, were 
manifesth^ irreconcilable. 

Again, it was not a single nation whose interests were concerned, 
but the whole world ; even countries that were as yet undiscovered. 
From the very first the contest gave clear indications how extensive 
would be its influence. Though the original antagonists were only 
an Italian prince and a German friar, it had hardly lasted ten years 
before every country in Christendom began to range itself on one 
side or the other. The Emperor's Flemish subjects were vehe- 
mently divided on the merits of the dispute. In Prance and 



78 MODEEN HISTOKY. [a.d. 1517. 

England Luther could soon number as many adherents as in 
Germany. And, through England, the results of the struggle 
have reached to every quarter of the globe, to the continents of 
Asia and Africa ; to the then but partially known America ; and 
to the countless isles of the Southern Seas, whose existence was as 
yet unknown to and unsuspected by the boldest enterprise or the 
wildest speculation. 

The permanence, too, of its effects are as memorable as their 
extent. Most commonly the triumphs of warfare pass away, leaving 
little or no durable mark on the history of the countries engaged. 
Brilliant as was the skill which won Ravenna and Pavia, fearful 
as was the carnage which soaked with blood the fields of Ma- 
rignan, the conquerors reaped little from those hard-fought vic- 
tories, but the glory of their achievement. But though three 
centuries and a half have elapsed since Luther first raised his 
voice against the supremacy of the Pope, the objects for which he 
contended, and which to a certain extent he accomplished, are not 
only cherished as earnestly and as warmly as at first by every 
people which bore its share in his victory ; but it may even be 
said that to this day the fruits of his triumph are still being 
gathered, and that no generation passes away without the prin- 
ciples which he maintained deriving increased strength and being 
adopted by fresh adherents. 

Nor should we separate the champion from the cause, nor forget 
to do honour to the dauntless hardihood and devotion to truth 
which could animate a man of a humble class, tmbefriended and 
unknown, to invite a contest with a potentate of whom at that time 
every temporal sovereign in Christendom acknowledged himself 
the vassal. He did not, he could not, deceive himself as to the 
difficulty of the enterprise which he was undertaking. Still less 
could he blind himself to the fate which awaited him if defeated. 
The ashes of Sautre,^ of Huss, of Savonarola, warned him and 
all in unmistakable language that no country aftbrded either a 
hope of pardon or an asylum for any who could even whisper a 
belief in such doctrines as he had proclaimed upon the housetops. 
Nor could he even encourage himself by the prospect which cheers 
the warrior on the field of battle of, if he falls, leaving a name 
which will be held in honour by his countrymen, a reputation 
which will be cherished as their proudest boast by his friends and 
kinsmen. He, if death came, could only look forward to an 
agonising death, whose pains would be aggravated by the stigma 
of heresy, if not of imposture ; while the victors would insult, and 

1 The English protomartj-r, burnt in the second j'ear of the reign of 
Henry IV., A.D 1400. 



A.D. 1521.] THE DIET OF WOEMS. 79 

even those who had secretly favoured him while alive would not 
dare to defend his memory. 

And at first the contest seemed so unequal that it might well 
have been renounced as hopeless by one whose courage was less 
iirmly sustained by a conviction of the truth of his cause, and 
by a reliance on a higher Power than that of man to uphold it. 
Not ouly did Henry of England enter the lists against him as an 
author, and thus apparently bind himself, as it were, by his own 
vanity, for ever to the maintenance of the old belief and practice ; 
while P'rancis, in the very same year in which he disowned the 
Pope at Wittenburg, committed more than one of his partisans to 
the flames ; but the supreme authority in his own country, Charles, 
in his newly acquired character of Emperor of Germany, convened 
a Diet of the Empire at Worms in the summer of the next year, 
1521, which, when he refused to retract his opinions, published a 
sentence of outlawry against him, and offered a large reward for 
his arrest, which would unquestionably have been followed by his 
instant execution. 

All the mightiest monarchs of the earth were thus united against 
him ; but, as signs were not wanting that their union would not be 
of long duration, and that therefore a brief respite might suffice for 
his safety, his own immediate sovereign, the Elector, conceived the 
idea of procuring him such a breathing time, and despatched a 
squadron of cavalry to waylay him as he was returning from 
Worms, and to carry him to the strong castle of Wartburg, in 
Thuringia, where he was kept in complete concealment for some 
months. By the summer of the next year the three sovereigns, as 
we have already seen, were openly engaged in war ; and Charles, 
devoting all his energies to the repulse and chastisement of Francis, 
had no attention to spare for theological controversies, or for execut- 
ing against a single heretic the vengeance of the Pope, with whose 
temporal policy he was already greatly dissatisfied, and whom he 
already saw he might soon desire to mortify rather than to assist. 
By the spring of 1522, therefore, Luther came forth from his con- 
finement, and for some years the war which raged in Italy com- 
pletely engrossed the minds of two of his enemies, Charles and 
Francis : while a transaction of a different kind was beginning 
to work on the third, the King of England, and to lead him to 
think of renouncing his own allegiance to the Pope rather than of 
compelling others, whether by force or by argument, to continue 
in theirs. 

The diversion thus effected was eminently favorable to Luther. 
The scholars and divines of Germany had leisure to examine 
his reasonings, without fear of having their deliberations rudely 
interrupted by edict or buUj and, as they almost unanimously 



80 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1526. 

adopted his principles, the inferior princes of tlie country in many 
instances permitted their own judgment to be guided by their 
decision, and established what now began to be called Lutheranisni 
in their territories ; so that, when Charles next revisited Germany, 
which he did not do till nine years after Luther had appeared 
before him at Worms, almost half the Empire had embraced the 
opinions which had then been so fiercely condemned : while, more- 
over, a Diet, which had been held at Spires in 1526, had issued 
edicts on the subject which, to the uncompromising adherents of 
the Papacy, seemed equivalent to a toleration of the new heresy. 
Charles now summoned a fresh Diet to meet at the same place ; 
and the course which events took there has been rendered memor- 
able by the fact of their uniting those who resisted the Papal 
authority under a more comprehensive title. Charles, through his 
commissioners, speaking to the Diet in the tone of a master, re- 
quired the members to repeal or ignore the edicts of the last meet- 
ing, and to adopt and enforce the decree issued at Worms. His 
command was still law to the majority; but those who objected, 
being not fewer than five sovereign princes, and the representatives 
of fourteen imperial or free cities, entered in the registers a formal 
protest against the vote ; and from this public act the name of 
Protestants was given to all those who, whether as partisans of 
Luther, or of other leaders in other countries, such as Calvin or 
Zwingle, assailed the Papal doctrines and claims to supreme 
authority.^ 

Another Diet, held a few months later at Augsburg, made 
a further contribution to the general union of the Reformers of 
different countries, since the Protestant princes who formed part 
of the assembly employed Melancthon, who, of all the divines 
who had embraced the new religion, had not only the most pro- 
found learning, but the soundest discretion and the most moderate 
and conciliatory temper, to draw up a statement of their reasons 
for separating from the Romish Church : a task which he per- 
formed with such admirable soundness of judgment, that the 
Confession of Augsburg, as the document which he framed was 
entitled, was at once adopted as the creed of the whole body 
of German Reformers ; and even to the present day its authority 
is recognised in the Lutheran Churches. But, though the lan- 
guage of the Confession was eminently, temperate, and as in- 
offensive to the upholders of the opinions it denounced as was 

1 The princes were : The new Elec- burgh, Nuremburgh, Ulm, Constance, 

tor, Henrj' of Saxony (Frederic had Reutlingen, Meiningen, Windsiieim, 

lately died), theMargraveofBranden- Lindau, Kempteu, Heilbron, Isna, 

burgh, the Landgrave of Hesse, the Weisseaburgh, Nordlingcn, and St, 

Duke of Lunenburgh, and the Prince Gal. 
of Anhalt. The cities were Stras- 



i.D. 1533.] THE LEAGUE OF SMALKALDE. 81 

compatible with the disproof of the doctrines themselves, it was 
met, on the part of the Emperor, by the most imperious edicts, 
absolutely condemning every article it contained, and imposing 
such severe penalties on all who adhered to it, that it drove them 
into measures of open resistance, and made civil war inevitable. 
The Emperor's edict was issued on the nineteenth of November, and, 
a month afterwards, the princes who had adopted Luther's views 
met at Smalkalde, a small village in Franconia, and there formed 
themselves into a confederacy known as the League of Smalkalde, 
by which they united all the Protestant States of Germany into one 
confederate body, bound to mutual defence against any potentate 
who might assail their religious liberties ; and invited the alliance 
of Henry of England, in whose capricious and headstrong mind 
the desire to divorce his wife, the aunt of the Emperor, had quite 
superseded his desire to uphold the theological views which he 
had formerly advocated. It was not strange that Henry should 
receive their invitation cordiallj^, and assist them with money ; 
but it was hardly to have been expected that they should have 
obtained, as they did obtain, a favorable answer from Francis 
also, who never for a moment wavered in his adherence to Papal 
doctrine, nor in his resolution to crush all religious innovations in 
his own kingdom by fire and sword, but who, already in all pro- 
bability meditating a renewal of hostilities with Charles, caught 
eagerly at anything which afforded a prospect of exciting factions 
and divisions in the Empire. And Charles himself was so appre- 
hensive of these powerful sovereigns combining against him, in 
which event he would have need of all the force of united Germany 
to enable him to make head against them, that, though no prince 
that ever lived was more intolerant by natural disposition, and 
though, at the first appearance of the Reformation, he had 
established the Inquisition in both Spain and the Netherlands, 
and had permitted that most merciless of all tribunals to inflict 
on scores and hundreds of his subjects in those lands the fearful 
punishment to which it condemned all heretics, he was forced to 
humble his mind to temporise in Germany ; and, in 1533, by an 
agreement known as the Truce of Nuremburg, he granted the 
German Protestants an immunity from all persecution till a 
General Council should be convened, with authority to decide al 
the points in dispute between what he could no longer refuse to 
recognise as the two Churches. 

The blood of martyrs has been said to water the Church ; but 
however stimulating persecution may be to dauntless spirits, it ia 
not in the nature of things that, among men in general, toleration 
bhould not be found to encourage a wider adoption of any creed ; 
and, as a practical toleration had been established by the Treaty of 



82 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1535. 

Nuremburg-, the succeeding years, during which its stipulations 
were observed, renewed, and even in some points extended, 
witnessed a rapid increase in the number of the Protestants in 
almost every province of Germany; while the constant rivalry 
and enmity subsisting between Francis and Charles was of in- 
calculable service to them while thus, as it were, in the infancy 
of their sect, by leading both sovereigns occasionally to court 
them. At one time Francis, far from waiting to have his aid 
solicited, seemed inclined to seek their alliance. A few years 
la1er Charles did the same thing, and voluntarily repealed all the 
disabilities which any of his former edicts had imposed upon them. 
But, though in return for these concessions, the Protestant princes 
supported him heartily in his war against France, and sent such 
reinforcements to his army in Lombardy as gave it a great 
superiority over that of his enemies, they could not prevent the 
Count d'Enghien, the first prince to win a high military renown 
of that family of Conde, which afterwards gave to France so many 
redoubtable warriors, from inflicting a most decisive defeat on his 
general, Guasto, at Cerisoles. But even that overthrow was 
favorable to the Protestants, from the necessity which it imposed 
on the Emperor of exerting all his strength to eflace that stain on 
his military renown by an invasion of France. And, when at last . 
the war was terminated by the Peace of Crepy, though a secret 
article in that treaty bound both the negotiators to spare no 
exertions to suppress heresy throughout the whole of their 
dominions, Charles was still too much occupied by a war in which 
he was involved with the Sultan, and by discussions with the Pope 
about the meeting of the Council of Trent, for which summonses 
were issued at the beginning of 1545, to be ready to execute his 
part of the agreement till the spring of 1546, at the beginning of 
which year Luther himself died. 

Even those who did not agree with Luther in all his opinions 
(and at one time the strife between his disciples and those of 
Calvin was so bitter that the Papists themselves were not more 
hated by either), and those who found fault with the vehemence 
of his denunciations of the Papal abuses; denunciations which 
must be admitted often to have resembled coarse invectives rather 
than convincing arguments ; and even those who most disapproved 
of some of his actions, such as his proclaiming his disavowal of 
the doctrine of the celibacy of the clergy by taking a nun for his 
wife, could not refuse him their admiration as a very great man. • 
And certainly, if extreme natural acuteness, armed with very 
extensive learning, animated with a sincere love of truth, and 
sustained in a contest of vital importance by the most dauntless 
intrepidity and most unwavering constancy of resolution, can 



A.-D. 1546.] CHARLES'S WAR WITH THE PROTESTANTS. 83 

entitle a man to the reverence of his fellows, none are better 
entitled to have their memory held in honour than he who, though 
in other countries, and especially in our own, he had had pre- 
cursors -whose labours had not been forgotten, but undoubtedly 
facilitated the success of his own, is nevertheless justly looked on 
as the Father and Founder of the Reformation. 

But Luther's death made no change in the resolution which 
Charles had at last taken to crush the Reformation in his German 
dominions by force of arms ; on the contrary, he was more than 
ever stimulated to carry out his purpose by two occurrences : the 
adoption of the new religion by one who was not only an Elector 
of the Empire, but one of the chief prelates of the Church, the 
Prince-Archbishop of Cologne, whom he, in consequence, by a 
stretch of authority beyond the constitution of the Empire, sum- 
moned to appear before him at Brussels, to answer for his apostasy, 
and against whom, as the Archbishop declined to appear to so 
illegal a citation, the Pope, Paul III., issued a bull of deprivation 
and excommimicatinn. The other event that influenced him was 
the refusal of the Protestants to accept as binding the decrees of 
the Council of Trent, which was composed of scarcely any mem- 
bers but a few Italian and Spanish prelates, and from which they 
appealed to either a free general Council or a national Council of 
the Empire ; offering, at the same time, if Charles should prefer 
it, to submit the whole question of religion to a joint Commission, 
composed of divines of each party. These remonstrances, how- 
ever, the Emperor treated with contempt. He had been for some 
time secretly raising troops in different quarters; and, early in 
] 546, he made a fresh treaty with the Pope, by which he bound 
himself instantly to commence warlike operations, and which, 
though it had been negotiated as a secret treaty, Paul instantly 
published, to prevent any retraction or delay on his part. 

War therefore now began, though Charles professed to enter 
upon it not for the purpose of enforcing a particular religious 
belief on the recusants, but for that of re-establishing the Imperial 
authority, which, as he affirmed, many of the confederate princes 
had disowned. Such a pretext he expected to sow disunion in 
the body, some members of which were far from desirous to 
weaken the great confederacy of the Empire : and, in effect, it did 
produce a hesitation in their early steps that had the most im- 
portant consequences on the first campaign ; for, in spite of the 
length of time during which he had secretly been preparing for 
war, when it came they were more ready than he. They at once 
took the field with an army of 90,000 men and 120 guns, while 
he, for the first few weeks after the declaration of war, had hardly 
10,000 men with him in Ratisbou ; and even when he was ioined 



84 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1546 

by his Spanish and Flemish levies, and by a body of troops witl 
which the Pope, on the execution of the recent treaty, furnished 
him, those reinforcements did not raise his numbers to much more 
than half those of the confederates ; and had they had the moral 
resolution and military skill to avail themselves at once of their 
superiority, they must have overvrhelmed him at the very com- 
mencement of hostilities. But the advantage of a single over a 
divided command was perhaps never more clearly exemplified 
than in the first operations of the two armies. He, as the weaker 
partj^, took up a defensive position near Ingoldstadt ; but, though 
they advanced within sight of his lines, they could not agree on 
the mode of attack, or even on the prudence of attacking him at 
all. The Landgrave of Plesse urged vigorous measures, affirming 
that an instant assault of his entrenchments, which were but 
slight, must terminate the war at a single blow ; but the Elector 
of Saxony, whose contingent was larger, and whose authority 
among the confederates was greater, dwelt on the superior quality 
of the Emperor's troops, who were mostly veterans tried in many 
a battle, and on the military skill of. the Emperor himself and of 
his chief officers ; till, at last, the confederates actually drew off, 
and Charles, advancing, made himself master of many important 
towns, which their irresolution alone had enabled him to approach. 
Meanwhile, his declaration that it was the establishment of his 
ovrn Imperial authority, and not the enforcement of the Papal 
doctrines, which was his aim, procured him an ally, who, though 
in realitjf his intention was not to serve the Emperor, but to make 
him an instrument for his own purposes, could not for shame have 
joined him had he avowed his real object. There had been a 
great mortality among the Electors of Saxony; the reigning 
prince, Henry, being the fourth who had enjoyed that rank since 
Luther had first commenced his agitation ; and a kinsman of his, 
Maurice, the head of another branch of his family, who ruled over 
a large portion of the province, conceived the idea of so profiting 
by these troubles as to get possession of the whole. With this 
view, though he also was a Protestant, he tendered his services 
to the Emperor, who, in spite of his youth, discerned in him a 
promise of very superior capacity, gladly accepted his aid, and 
promised to reward him with the territories which he coveted. 
The advantages which Protestantism eventually derived from 
Maurice's success has blinded some historians to the infamy of the 
conduct by which he achieved it ; but, while it is hardly possible 
to refuse our admiration to the address with which he ac- 
complished his objects, outwitting not only his confiding relative, 
but the crafty and all-suspicious Charles, it is the duty of all who 
have the due regard for good faith and integrity to brand his 



A.B. 1546.] TEEACHERY OF IIAUEICE OF SAXONY. 85 

"whole policy and conduct as stamped -with as base treachery 
as is recorded in the annals of any country. The Elector Henry 
was his cousin ; the Landgrave of Hesse was his father-in-law. 
Pleading an unwillingness while so young (he was barely twenty- 
one) to engage in the war, he volunteered to undertake the pro- 
tection of his cousin's dominions during his absence in the field. 
His offer was thankfully accepted ; but he was no sooner installed 
in his charge than he began to negotiate with the enemy to invade 
the territories which he had bound himself to protect. And on 
receiving from Charles a copy of a decree, called the Ban of the 
Empire, which had just been issued against both the Elector and 
the Landgrave, he at once raised a force of his own, with which he 
overran one portion of Henry's iLominions, while a division of the 
Imperial army attacked the rest ; and he would probably have suc- 
ceeded at once in subduing the whole Electorate, had the main body 
of the Protestants been able to maintain the war on the Danube. But 
the extreme irresolution of the confederate commanders there had 
enabled Charles to reduce nearly all the chief cities in that district 
to submission ; he had imposed heavy fines on them ; had com- 
pelled them to renounce the League ; and the consequence waa 
that, at the approach of winter, the Elector returned to Saxony, 
with a force which, though imable to check the Emperor, 
was siifHcient to chastise Maurice for his treachery ; to drive 
him not only from the towns and districts which he had 
seized, but to strip him also of the greater part of the territory 
which belonged to him by inheritance ; and had not Henry, with 
a folly inconceivable after the experience which he had had of his 
baseness and perfidy, allowed himself to be deluded into a negotia- 
tion with him, he might with ease have entirely overwhelmed him. 
For Charles was not at first able to send him any assistance be- 
yond a small detachment, under Albert, marquis of Brandenburgh, 
whom Henry had no difficulty in surprising, defeating, and taking 
prisoner. The very tow;ns which Maurice had compelled to obe- 
dience weakening his army by the necessity which they imposed on 
him of garrisoning them. 

The Pope, though Charles was fighting his battle, j'et, following 
the political traditions of his predecessors, looked at the interests 
of Italy and her freedom from foreign domination as even more 
important than the maintenance of orthodoxy ; and, fearing lest 
the success which the Emperor had already achieved might enable 
him again to become master of Italy, and perhaps of Rome, 
recalled his forces, which formed so large a portion of the Imperial 
army that Charles was compelled to remain inactive through the 
winter; and had he not been relieved from his fears on another 
side by the death of Francis, which took place in the spring of 



86 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1647. 

1547, lie might yery probably have given the Protestants a respite 
vrhich would have enabled them to recover their lost ground. But 
Francis's death changed his views. He had no fear of a renewal 
of hostilities by France while the king of that country was new to 
the exercise of his authority ; and therefore, the very week after 
the accession of Henry II., he resumed operations, and marched 
against the Elector, as the only antagonist remaining who was able 
or likely to give him any trouble. It was a bold enterprise, for, 
from the dilferent causes which have been mentioned, his army 
was so reduced that he could muster but 16,000 men for the cam- 
paign, a force far smaller than that of the prince against whom 
he was marching ; but the Elector, now that he was alone, showed 
even worse generalship than when he had colleagues to consult, 
and distributed so many of his regiments among the small towns 
which he expected to be attacked, but which they were quite in- 
sufficient to preserve for him, that when, on the twenty-third of 
April, Charles reached the Elbe and prepared to attack him, he had 
no advantage over his assailant but that of position. That indeed 
was very strong. He lay at Muhlberg, on the right bank of the 
river, which at that point is 300 yards wide and more than 4 feet 
deep, with a stream so rapid as to render the passage, even for horse- 
men, a task of great difficulty and danger ; there was no bridge, 
and not more than one and that a very narrow ford : while, as the 
ground on his side was higher than that on which the Emperor 
stood, his batteries were able to sweep the opposite bank with 
great efi'ect. So formidable did his position seem that when the 
Emperor, after reconnoitring it, announced his intention to attack 
it the next mprning, his great general the Duke of Alva, and even 
Maurice, whose natural courage was sharpened by the prospect of 
gaining the Electorate, remonstrated against his determination as 
one of almost desperate rashness. But Charles's disposition was 
at all times inclined to the bolder measures ; and on this, as on 
many other occasions, fortune favoured the boldest. A peasant of 
the neighbourhood undertook to guide the cavalry through the 
ford, and he himself led them in person into the water, though 
more than once the stream proved so deep that they had to 
advance many yards by swimming. Encouraged by such an ex- 
ample, the infantry emulated the audacity of the cavalry. As 
there were not boats enough on their side to make a bridge, some 
of them swam the entire width of the river, with their swords in 
their mouths, and brought back an additional supply from the 
Saxon side ; and, while these operations were in progress, so thick 
a fog settled on the river that the Saxon gunners were unable to 
direct their fire Avith any correctness so as to obstruct them. As 
soon as the Imperialists reached the right bank, the contest was in 



A.I). I047.J THE BATTLE OF MUHLBEKG. 87 

fact over. The Elector, indeed, de;^ired to avoid fighting- at all, 
and gave the order to retreat towards Witteuburg ; but the enemy 
were too close upon him to render such a measure practicable. He 
was therefore compelled to halt and fight ; and when he found 
this to be the case, even his enemies confessed that he proved that 
his previous indecision and hesitation had proceeded from an error 
of judgment, not from any want of courage. But the personal 
prowess of one man has rarely saved a battle ; and his followers 
were too much disheartened by the previous occurrences, by their 
retreat, by their chiefs evident desire to avoid the conflict, and by 
the extreme gallantry of their assailants, to second his efforts as 
they should have done. They soon gave -way ; many fell ; still 
more were taken, and among them the Elector himself, who was 
severely wounded; while the entire loss of the conquerors is said 
not to have exceeded fifty men. 

So decisive a victory seemed to be the conclusion of the war. 
But its very completeness brought new dangers on the conqueror. 
His conduct after Pavia had shown that among his great quali- 
ties he did not number generosity ; and his treatment of his new 
prisoner was marked not only with unexampled insolence, but 
with a cruelty more resembling the ferocity of a buccaneer than 
the conduct of a Christian knight accustomed to the rules and 
practice of civilised warfare. He insulted his captive when first 
brought into his presence with ignoble reproaches. When his 
wife, a princess of beauty and spirit, having received in Witten- 
burg, his capital, some of the fugitives from Muhlberg, showed 
a resolution with their aid to defend that city, he compelled her 
to surrender it by the threat of putting her husband to death 
if she should persist in defending it. And, as if no service ren- 
dered by others could entitle them to intercede for any who had 
once stood in arms against him, though Maurice was son-in-law of 
the Landgrave of Hesse, he stripped that prince of his territories, 
and b)^ a device scarcely removed from the tricks of a kidnapper, 
threw him also into prison, thinking perhaps that Maurice, on 
whom, after Muhlberg, he had conferred the whole Electorate 
of Saxony which he pronounced Henry to have forfeited, was in 
too great awe of him, or was too much influenced by the hope of 
obtaining further benefits, to resent such treacherous and injurious 
treatment of his own father-in-law. 

He misunderstood the character of Maurice, and that prince's 
views of his own position. Maurice had already obtained from 
him all that he could expect from his goodwill ; and though he 
wasstill bent on acquiring more, it was on the necessities of Charles, 
and not on his liberality, that he founded his future hopes. 

For some time it seemed as if fortune were in doubt whether to 



88 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.b. 154S. 

continue her favour to the Emperor, or to frown on him. He had 
beaten down all who resisted him in Germany ; but, though in a 
fresh Diet held at Augsburg he displayed a more fixed resolution 
to enforce submission to Papal doctrine than he had previously 
ventured to display, the Pope showed more and more that his sus- 
picions of his possible designs outweighed his sense of obligation. 
To diminish his influence over the Council of Trent, Paul trans- 
ferred its sittings to Bologna ; and, though the Emperor forbad 
those prelates who were his own subjects to attend it any longer, 
and delivered a formal protest from himself against the transference, 
he was unable to procure any change in the policy of the Pope and 
his advisers ; and, in revenge, before the Diet was dissolved, he 
came forward in a new character, as the framer of a measure of 
conciliation which, thoiigh he called it the ' Interim,' to indicate 
that it was only a temporary arrangement, contained concessions, 
such, for instance, as that of the administration of the Sacrament in 
both kinds, which, if they once became widely adopted, it would 
obviously be almost impossible subsequently to recall. But the 
measure proved equally unacceptable to all parties. The Pope 
looked only to the concessions it contained, and rejected it on that 
ground. The Protestants regarded only those points in which 
conformity to the practices of Rome was still required ; and were 
equally zealous against it for that reason. And, though Charles 
made himself master of many of the free cities which were foremost 
in denouncing it, he had on the whole but little reason to plume 
himself on the success of his own eflForts as a reformer or a 
mediator. 

He convened another Diet at Augsburg, which had no other 
result but to give Maurice the opportunity, for which, ever since 
Muhlberg, he had been on the watch, of turning against him. 
And Charles's objects and management of them were such as to 
enable him to give his opposition the appearance of being dic- 
tated by public spirit. The Elector had always professed himself 
a Protestant, and the special purpose for which the Diet was 
assembled was to force the acceptance of the Interim on Saxon3% 
To resist such a design seemed the clear duty of one who was now 
the sovereign ruler of that province. As a Prince of the Empire, 
he was also justified in exerting a vigilance to maintain the inde- 
pendence of the Diet ; which Charles, who. had brought a body of 
Spanish troops to Augsburg to overawe its deliberations, was by 
that act manifestly threatening in an imconstitutional manner. He 
had, moreover, a personal ground of quarrel against the Emperor, 
for having made him an instrument in the seizure and imprison- 
ment of his own father-in-law, the Landgrave. In fact, each 
aitherto had been seekina: to make a tool of the other: but 



A.D. 1552.] MAUEICE AND HENEY II. 89 

Maurice, -who had obtained all that he wanted, namely, the Elec- 
torate, which could not be taken away from him, had nothing more 
to gain by continued subservience ; while for more than one of 
the schemes which the Emperor was still forming, the co-operation 
or, at least, the acquiescence of the Elector was very desirable. 

Maurice, though bold, was never rash. He exerted all his 
address, and not unsuccessfully, to strengthen his influence among 
the German princes and cities ; but he also felt that, to render 
that rupture which he meditated with the Emperor safe, he had 
need of the alliance of some foreign sovereign. And just at this 
moment an attempt of Charles to add the Duchy of Parma to his 
Milanese dominion so offended the new King of France, Henry II., 
that he willingly listened to overtures from the Saxon Prince, and 
in October 1551 concluded a treaty of alliance with him, which 
however was kept secret by both till they were ready to commence 
operations. During the interval Maurice adopted eveiy device to 
prevent the Emperor from suspecting the storm that was about to 
burst upon him, and to justify himself to the world for the rupture. 
He feigned the fullest confidence in him. He addressed to him a 
formal entreaty, backed by many other influential princes, for the 
release of the Landgrave ; and, when that request was haughtily 
rejected, he still gave no sign of having taken offence; but dis- 
cussed in amicable terms proposals for sending Protestant divines 
to Trent, where the Council had lately been reassembled, and 
even promised to pay Charles a visit at Innspruck, where the 
Emperor was holding his court during that winter, with a view 
to arrange all matters in dispute at a personal conference; not 
throwing off" the mask till he had 25,000 men actually under 
arms, at whose head he suddenly put himself in March 1552, and 
without a moment's delay commenced operations. 

Henry was equally ready for action, and equally prompt in his 
movements. His army consisted of about 36,000 men, of whom the 
main body was commanded, under himself, by the celebrated admiral 
Gaspard de Coligny ; but though their plans had been laid in con- 
cert, the manifestoes which the two princes put forward to justify 
their having recourse to war were not identical in their language. 
Maurice avowed his object to be to secure to the Protestants the 
iree exercise of their religion, and to all Germans the preservation 
of their ancient constitution, which was now threatened by a 
monarch of absolute power; and he further complained of the 
continued detention of the Landgrave. Henry said nothing of 
this prince, with whom he had no connection ; nor, as an adherent 
of the Pope, could he profess a desire for any indulgence to the 
Lutherans. He was reduced to enforce the necessity of pretending 
a zeal for the independence of tlie German princes in general, and 



90 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1552. 

styled himself the Protector of the Liberties of Germany. In 
truth, the spread of the Reformation -was hai'dly aided more by 
the discontent felt at the theological novelties sanctioned by Rome 
than by the despotic character of the Romish religion as deve- 
loped in the conduct of the sovereigns who were its chief sup- 
porters : while, on the other hand, if we compare the extreme 
rigour with which Charles treated the Protestants with the 
contempt he on more than one occasion showed for the Pope, 
we may perhaps fairly conclude that what he hated most in their 
views was not the theological doctrines which they maintained, 
but the principles of civil liberty which seemed to proceed from, 
and to be inseparably connected with, their assertion of religious 
freedom. 

Charles laboured unremittingly throughout his whole reign to 
render himself an absolute monarch. His son Philip excited the 
great revolt against his power in the Netherlands, of which we 
shall speak hereafter, far more by his encroachments on the fran- 
chises and privileges of the different cities and provinces in that 
country, than by his religious persecutions, merciless as they 
were; just as we see in the history of our own country, the very 
men who refused to pass an Exclusive Bill to prevent James from 
succeeding to the throne, rose afterwards and drove him from it, 
when they perceived that his interpretation of his duty to his 
Church was incompatible with the preservation of their laws and 
privileges as free Englishmen. 

But though the allies took care to be ready for instant action 
before they gave the slightest indication of their designs, Charles, 
on the contrary, was wholly unprepared for hostilities, and their 
declaration of war came upon him like a thunderclap, when he 
had scarcely more troops with him at Innspruck than would serve 
for a body guard. He could offer no resistance on either side. 
While Maurice made himself master of Augsburg and the other 
chief towns in that part of Germany, Henry, advancing on Lor- 
raine, seized Toul, Verdun, and even by a stratagem obtained pos- 
session of the great fortress of Metz without striking a blow ; 
and presently the Emperor was even compelled to fly from Inn- 
spruck by night, during a heavy storm, to avoid falling into the 
hands of Maurice, who could probably have reached that city in 
time to prevent his escape, had he thought it politic to encumber 
himself with so important a prisoner. As he said himself, ' Some 
birds are too big for any cage.' 

In truth he extorted as much from the Emperor's fears as he 
could have obtained from his necessities. A few weeks aftervrards, 
he laid siege to Frankfort ; and the danger of so ricb and im- 
portant a city reduced Charles to purchase peace even at the price 



A.D. 1552.] THE PEACE OF PASSAU. 91 

of concessions to tlie Lutherans, which were equivalent to a com- 
plete and permanent toleration. By a treaty concluded at Passau, 
on the second of August, all who adhered to the Confession of 
Augshurg were allowed the free, imdisturbed exercise of their 
religion till the meeting of the next Diet ; and, in the event of 
that Diet proving unable to terminate the existing religious differ- 
ences by a reunion on terms of mutual concession, then the 
stipulations in favour of the Protestants were to continue for ever. 
It marks in a striking manner the disunion that already existed 
between the different sects of Protestants, that the Calvinists 
obtained no share in this toleration ; nor did it extend to the 
Netherlands, where the converts from Popery were chiefly of that 
denomination. But still, limited as the toleration was, it was 
such a complete abandonment of the policy of his whole reign that 
it was a severe humiliation to the Emperor, and fate had further 
mortifications in store for him. The conclusion of peace in Ger- 
many left him at leisure to turn all his force against France ; and 
having, with great exertions, collected a more powerful army than 
he had for years seen around his standards, since it was swelled by 
the troops of more than one Protestant prince, who, now that the 
cause of discord in their own land was removed, were as eager as 
himself to expel the French from a German town, he marched 
against Metz at the head of 60,000 men, with the Duke of Alva 
as his lieutenant-general. But Henry was as earnest to retain as 
Charles was to recover that important fortress : with rare dis- 
crimination he entrusted its defence to a prince whose warlike 
talents were as yet unsuspected by everyone but himself, Francis, 
duke of Guise, to whom France was afterwards indebted for an 
acquisition which gratified her national pride more than any other 
event of the century, the recovery of Calais. The duke subse- 
quently more than cancelled that service by the way in which, ex- 
cited by the popularity his achievements had won for him, he gave 
the rein to his lawless ambition, and plunged the kingdom into the 
longest and bloodiest civil war that as yet had ever been witnessed 
in Christendom. But on the present occasion he proved himsell 
worthy of the task confided to him : with great energy, judgment, 
and military skill he rapidly put the city in a defensible condition, 
encouraging the garrison to unusual toil by setting the example, 
and labouring with his own hands at the fortifications ; so that 
when the Imperial army came in sight of the walls, they found 
that a long investment would be necessary to reduce it. But 
Guise was as ready to deliver as to receive attack. Not only were 
the breaches instantly repaired, the mines countermined, but night 
after night he came down on their works with successful sallies, 
inflicting on them heavy loss, and keeping them in 'a constant 



92 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1552 

state of alarm. The weather, too, which throughout the winter 
was unusually severe, was a most useful ally to him ; disease 
broke out in the besiegers' camp, till at last, after an investment of 
nearly two months, in which he had lost half his army, the 
Emperor drew off his troops, comforting himself with forced 
philosophy, by observing that ' Fortune was a female who reserved 
her favours for younger men.' 

But philosophical aphorisms -such as this are rather calculated 
to disguise a sufferer's vexation from the world than from 
himself. Even the death of Maurice, against whom he entertained 
a particular enmity for having so completely outwitted him, and 
who the next year fell in battle while gaining a great victory over 
Albert of Brandenburgh, failed to cheer him ; nor did the capture 
of some important French towns on the frontier of the Netherlands 
counterbalance in his eyes the loss of the great Lorraine fortress ; 
which the next year he again unsuccessfully tried to recover, by 
the treachery of some monks ; but which was destined to remain 
French for above 300 years, and never to be restored to Germany 
till a French sovereign of a new and foreign dynasty, deceived by 
incapable and unworthy servants alike as to the resources of his 
own and of other kingdoms, entered, unprovoked, into a suicidal 
war, and in a few weeks inflicted a more fatal blow on his adopted 
country than half a century before the whole world in arms had 
been able to deal. 

And it is probable that the mortification which these disasters 
caused the Emperor accelerated the adoption of a design which he 
had formed many yeai's before ; and which, if no other event had 
made his reign remarkable, would of itself have fixed both it and 
himself ineffaceably in the memory of mankind. Above twelve 
centuries before, a Roman emperor, who singularly resembled 
Charles in the ostentation with which he had added new honours ^ 
to the Imperial title which had contented his predecessors, as well 
as in the ferocious bigotry which he had shown in the persecu- 
tion of all who ventured to embrace a new creed which he him- 
self discountenanced, had voluntarily descended from the throne 
to pass the last years of his life in a private station. As early 
as the year 1540, Charles had announced to one of his most 
familiar associates his intention of following the example of Dio- 

1 We have seen how the new title an ornarrient detested by the Romana 

of Majestj' was invented to gratify as the odious ensign of royalty, and 

the vanity of Charles. Gibbon tells the use of which had been considered 

us, c. xiii., how ' The pride or rather as the most desperate act of the mad- 

the policy of Diocletian engaged that ness of Caligula. ... It was his ob- 

artful prince to introduce the stately ject to display the unbounded power 

magnificence of the court of Persia, which the Emperors possessed over 

He ventured to assume the diadem, the Roman world.' 



A.n. 1555.] CHAKLES ABDICATES THE THEONE. 93 

cletiau ; but he could hardly have executed his design as to Spain 
till the death of his mother, before which event he -was only king 
it might be said on sufferance. She, however, after half a century 
of hopeless insanity, died in April 1555 ; and in the autumn of the 
same year, at a meeting of the States of the Netherlands at 
Brussels, Charles, in a speech of great dignity and pathos, formally 
resigned to his son his authority over those provinces, and a few 
weeks afterwards he made a similar renunciation of the kingdom 
of Spain with all its vast dependencies. "While in the enjoyment 
of youth and health he had greatly preferred his Flemish terri- 
tories, which were his birthplace, to his Spanish dominions. But 
in his old age, for, though he was but fifty-five years old, gout and 
other disorders had already made him an old man, he preferred 
the sunny vallies of Spain for his abode ; and some years before he 
had selected a convent of the Order of St. Jerome, the least ascetic 
of all such brotherhoods, in the most beautiful part of Estrenia- 
dura, not far from the city of Plasencia, as the place of his future 
retirement. In the interval he had added to the original building 
a wing, carefully furnished with everything necessary for the 
comfort of a valetudinarian, who, though he had laid aside the 
title, was never likely to forget that he had been a king; and 
thither he now repaired. Diocletian after his abdication found his 
health and his pleasure in the innocent enjoyment of his gardening, 
exulting, like the old Corycian, on the banks of the Galesus, in the 
growth of his cabbages.^ But Charles could not wean himself 
either from the luxuries of his former state, or from his deep 
interest in the affairs of Europe and in the policy of the nations 
which he once had ruled. On his arrival at Yuste, which was the 
name of the convent, he saluted the prior and the brotherhood of 
which he was now to become a member, in words something like 
those of Wolsey : — 

An old man, broken with the storms of state, 
Is come to lay his weary bones among ye. 

But, unlike the great Cardinal, he had come with a royal retinue, 
with huge fourgons of plate, and above fifty servants, among whom 
was a vast train of cooks, whose task was to see that even in that 
inland district the retired monarch did not fare less sumptuously 
than at Ghent or Brussels, where the sea was at hand to furnish 

1 Namque sub (Ebalise memini me turribus altis, 
Qua niger humectat flaventia culta Galesus, 
Correium vidisse senem, cui pauca relicti 
Jugera ruris erant. 

' For where with stately towers Tarentum stands, 
And deep Galesus soaks the yellow sands, 
I chanc'd an old Corycian swain to know, 
Lord of lew acres.' — Dryden, Georgics, iv. 176. 



94 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1557. 

daily novelties and delicacies for his table. For the gout, which 
had prematurely broken down his strength, was attributable mainly 
to his indulgence of an insatiable appetite, which in one of lower 
rank would have been called illbred gluttony ; and the chief differ- 
ence in that respect which his abdication made was that, as it left 
him more leisure to indulge his propensity, he lienceforth gave it 
the rein more unrestrainedly than ever. 

Nor was his appetite for military and political news abated. 
Among the officers of his household whom he still retained in his 
service were some of the veterans who had won distinction in his 
campaigns; one of whom, Don Luis de Avila, had also written 
an account of them in a style which the Spaniards have compared 
for force and elegance to CfBsar's narrative of his Gallic wars, and 
which was so highly esteemed by Charles that a copy of the book, 
bound in imperial velvet, was a constant ornament of his table. 
With him and another warlike noble, Don Luis Quixada, whom 
some, perhaps from the similarity of the name, have imagined to 
have been the original from whom Cervantes drew the immortal 
knight of La Mancha, Charles would eagerly discuss the occur- 
rences which were proceeding in the world which he had left; 
and the clearness with which he still appreciated the possible 
consequences of great events, and the undiminished energy of his 
mind, are shown in his first comment on the great victory of St. 
Quentin. 'Was not his son,' he asked, ' already in Paris ? ' as no 
doubt he would himself have been, or would have endeavoured 
to be, after so decisive a ti-iumph. 

In some other respects his life at Yuste did him honour. 
Though anxious for his future fame, as one who had played so 
important a part must have been, he did not desire the truth to be 
concealed, or perhaps he thought the real truth his best panegyric. 
He knew that one of his chaplains, Sepulveda, was writing his 
memoirs ; but while he willingly gave him information on every 
point on which he desired it, he steadily refused to read what his 
biographer had written, that the good priest might be under no 
temptation to flatter him. He is even believed to have spent part 
of his leisure in composing an autobiographical account of his 
own career, which he had begun many years before ; but it has 
never been found. He was kinder, too, and more considerate of 
others than he had shown himself in the plenitude of his power; 
charitable and even munificent to the veterans w'ho had served in 
his different wars, or to their families if they had left relations in 
indigence. But this humanity was so far from extending to those 
who differed from him on religious topics that his bigotry and zeal 
for persecution, as if that were his ruling passion, grew stronger 
Bnd fiercer as he approached the grave. As soon as he heard that 



*.D. 1558.] DEATH OF CHARLES V. 95 

the Reformation had reached Spain, and that the inquisitors had 
arrested some persons suspected of heresy, he at once urged them 
' to burn them all, for not one would ever become a true Catholic, 
and worthy to live ; ' and in a subsequent letter he enjoined them 
to imitate the course he had adopted in the Netherlands, ' where 
all who continued obstinate in their errors were burnt alive, and 
those who were admitted to penitence were beheaded.' He even 
expressed a regret that he had paid such regard to the safe- 
conduct on the faith of which Luther had visited Worms, as to 
forbear to send that arch-heretic to the stake, as his predecessor 
had sent Huss; yet, at the very same time, with a curious 
inconsistency, he expressed the greatest discontent at his son's 
general, the Duke of Alva, forbearing to inflict some chastisement 
on the perfidious Paul IV., when the Spanish army was at the 
gates of Rome, and the Pope, was manifestly in his power. 

He had not reckoned on a long life at Yuste, but his time was 
shorter than he had probably expected. In the spring of 1558 his 
favorite sister Eleanor, the Dowager Queen of France, died after 
a short illness ; and he was greatly affected by her death, which 
he looked on as a forerunner of his own. He was so impressed 
with the belief that, by the very strangest freak that a morbid 
fancy ever conceived, he insisted on having his obsequies perfoi-med 
in his lifetime ; and the chapel at Yuste was accordingly hung 
with black, and the solemn service appointed for the burial of the 
dead was performed round a huge catafalque, while Charles him- 
self, muffled in a dark mantle and bearing a lighted candle in his 
hand, mingled with his mourners, terminating the ceremony by 
giving up the taper into the hands of the officiating priest, as a 
token that he surrendered his soul to the Almighty. 

This singular funeral was in some degree the cause of his death. 
A few days afterwards he was attacked by a fever, which was 
partly attributed to the agitation into which the preparations for 
the ceremony had not unnaturally thrown him, and on the 
twenty-first of September he died. 

It is not veryeasj'^ to form a just estimate of Charles's character. 
The grandeur of his position as the most powerful monarch in the 
world at a most important period in its history, while it makes it 
the more desirable, renders it also the more difficult to decide 
impartially and correctly how much of his greatness was due to 
that position, and how much to his own genius or virtue. His 
military skill appears to have been of no high order, for, except at 
Muhlberg and in his war in Africa against Barbarossa, he never 
gained any advantage of moment where he commanded in person; 
in his invasion of Provence he was entirely baffled by Mont- 



96 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1558. 

morenc)^, who was no general of the first rank, and after Cerisoles 
he was still more decidedly outgeneralled by the Dauphin, after- 
wards Henry II. ; while his later enterprises were so little mea- 
sured by his power that they resulted in the loss of a most 
valuable fortress and a considerable district, and enabled the 
French to boast that they had completely retrieved the disasters 
which he inflicted on them in his earlier campaigns, when Bourbon 
and Pescara were invincible. He has generally been more praised 
for his political capacity ; and it must be admitted that a sovereign 
who ruled over such vast dominions in such troublous times, and 
who, in spite of the ferment caused in every part of them by the new 
religious agitation, transmitted to his son an authority far more 
absolute than that which he inherited, is entitled to the credit of 
having been a successful governor so far as his own interest and 
not that of his subjects was concerned. For it cannot be denied 
that towards them his system of administration was one of stern 
repression and relentless severity, rather than of humane indul- 
gence and statesmanlike consideration. His foreign policy was 
less successful. His conduct to foreign princes was one of habitual 
hypocrisy and perfidy ; towards Francis, when his prisoner, it was 
not only ungenerous, but unwise ; exacting concessions which he 
must have known would not be fulfilled, and which were yet of 
a character to render the French king his irreconcilable enemy. 
And his subsequent quarrels with France not only lost him a great 
part of Lorraine, but reduced him to the humiliating necessity of 
making peace with the Protestant princes of Germany, though so 
greatly inferior to him in power, on their own terms. One quality 
very indispensable to a king he seems to have had in high 
perfection, a shrewd discernment of character and prompt appre- 
ciation of ability. He was a judicious selector of able men, 
whether in council or in the field, and he treated them with 
undeviating confidence. To speak last of his last act, whatever 
deduction we may make on account of his failing health and a sort 
of morbid temperament which he perhaps inherited from his 
mother, we must admit his abdication to have been an act of great 
and rare magnanimity. The frequency with which, in the memory 
of the present generation, his example has been followed has a 
tendency to weaken the impression it makes on us. But the love 
of power is so natural to mankind, the enjoyment of it is so 
calculated to increase their fondness for it, that the voluntary 
renunciation of it surely deserves to be regarded as a proof of 
splendid superiority to the ordinary foibles of humanity; and if 
age had had a share in producing that superiority, it was age so 
unaccompanied by that peevishness which is its not unfrequent 
companion, that no one bom to a humble lot ever endured it with 



A.D. 1558.] 



CHAEACTER OF CHAELES V. 



97 



more contented cheerfulness than the retirement and comparative 
isolation of Yuste were borne by him, who had formerly boasted 
that the sun never set upon his territories, and whose chosen ^ motto 
had implied that, even with that boundless dominion, he was yet 
unsatisfied.^ 



1 Plus ultra. 

2 The authorities for the preced- 
ing chapter are, besides the Histories 
of France already mentioned, Coxe's 



House, of Austria, Eobertson'a 
Charles V., with PreScott's addi- 
tional chapters, d'Aubigne's History 
of Hit Reformaiion. 



98 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.b. 1558. 



CHAPTER y. 
A.D. 1558 — 1578. 

DURING tlie three years which elapsed between his father's 
abdication and his death, Philip's government had been 
singularly triumphant. His generals, the Duke of Savoy and 
Count Egmont, had inflicted on the French the most terrible 
defeat which their arms had sustained since Agincourt ; and, only 
two months before the decease of the old Emperor, Egmont, whose 
subsequent fate supplies one of the most striking warnings recorded 
in history of the proverbial ingratitude of princes, followed it up 
with a second blow not less decisive,, thougb on a smaller scale, at 
Gravelines, which reduced France to terminate the war by the 
Treaty of Chateau Cambresis, and it may be that these great 
victories, by inducing Philip to fancy that there were no limits to . 
his power, as he certainly believed that there was none to his 
rights, led him on to the fatal measures of bigotry, tyranny, and 
cruelty which resulted in the loss of the most flourishing and 
valuable portion of his dominions. 

The Netherlands, or Flanders, as the country was called, which, 
with some slight difference corresponds to the modern Kingdoms 
of PloUand and Belgium, comprehended seventeen provinces;^ 
which, though not uniform in race or language, for in these points 
some claimed kindred with France and others with Germany ; and, 
though divided by mutual jealousies which often broke out in 
petty wars, had at the same time bonds of union usually sufficient 
to counterbalance the elements of division. All had liberties and 
privileges of which they were justly tenacious ; all were of an in- 
dustrious disposition, which showed itself in the establishment of 
profitable manufactures j and of a natural genius for mercantile 
enterprise, which had made some of their cities seats of commercial 
prosperity equal to that of the most wealthy commonwealths of 
northern Italy. In some, too, a humanising refinement had es- 

^ Four DucWes: Brabant, Lem- Mechlin, Friesland, *Overyssel,* Gro- 

berg, Luxembourg, * Gueldres or ningen, ^''Utrecht. Those maiked * 

juelderland ; one Margravate, Ant- •werethey which eventually separated 

werp ; seven Counties : Artois, Hain- from Spain, and formed the Republic 

Hult, Flanders, Namur, Zutphen, of the United Provinces. 
* Holland, *Zoeland ; five Lordships • 



A.D. 1558.] CONDITION OF THE NETHERLANDS. 99 

tablished distinguished schools of learning and art ; so that even an 
Italian, who visited the country in the last years of Charles V., 
did not disdain to compare 'Antwerp, for its trade, to Venice; 
Louvain, for its science, to Padua ; Ghent, for its size, to Verona ; 
and Brussels, for the beauty of its site, to Brescia.' ^ Flourish- 
ing as, under these circumstances, it thus was, the country, before 
the time at which we have arrived, contributed a larger revenue to 
the royal exchequer than Philip's Italian dominions, than Spain 
itself, or even than the golden soil of Mexico and Peru. So im- 
portant indeed to the treasury was the amount raised, that Charles 
himself, with all his tyrannical desire, as bigot and as sovereign, 
to force his own belief on all his subjects, in more than one in- 
stance temporised with the Flemings ; and, though he was aware 
that the preachers of the Reformation had found no small number 
of disciples in their Provinces, he abstained from introducing the 
Inquisition into some of the wealthiest states ; and in other cases 
connived at the partial violation of his edicts. And it was only in 
those cities where he anticipated no resistance that he gave the 
rein to his sanguinary intolerance, and dealt, to use his own words, 
* by fire, by the pit, or by the sword,' with all who were even 
suspected (for evidence of such acts was not required) of favouring 
the new doctrines.^ 

But connivance and toleration of any kind were unendurable to 
his less politic heir. Philip was a prince of a strangely inconsistent 
character. He was possessed by a most omnivorous ambition, yet, 
even in his youth, was wholly devoid of enterprise. He aspired to 
add both these islands and France to his hereditary dominions ; 
but the means by which these acquisitions were to be obtained 
were not war and conquest, but, first, the utter extinction of heresy 
in his own territories, and then the respect and gratitude towards 
himself as the champion of the true faith which this result would 
implant in the breasts of all true believers in France and England, 
and which, as he expected, would induce the French to repeal the 
Salic law which they had so long cherished as the fundamental 
principle of their succession, and the English to acquiesce in the 
assassination of their Queen, to whom, in spite of many and 
grievous imperfections in her character, they were sincerely at- 
tached, lie knew, as his father had known, that in no part of 

1 Relatione di 31. Cavallo, 1551, the reign of Charles. Motley quotes, 

quoted by Prescott, Philip II. vol. i. ■•.vith evident approval, the estimate 

p. 29.9. which makes them at least 50.000. 

'■^ There is a great difference of {Rise of Dutch Republic, i. 114), 

opinion between the two most recent which Prescott {Philip II. i. 309) 

and painstaking historians of this treats as an incredible exaggera- 

period as to the number of victims tion. 
devoured by the Inquisition during 



100 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1358. 

his dominions were Protestcants (adherents, indeed, not so gener- 
ally of Luther as of Oalvin) more numerous than in the Nether- 
lands ; and, accordingly, in the Netherlands he resolved at once to 
proceed to their utter extirpation. ' It were better,' he was wont 
to say, * not to reign at all than to reign over heretics.' And it 
was not long before he showed that his inteipretation of this 
offence was a wide one, and that any attempt to set bounds to his 
autlaorit}', even when his mode of exercising it was incompatible 
with and subversive of pririleges formally secured to the difterent 
Provinces by his ancestors, was in his eyes a heresy quite as 
criminal as that which denied the supremacy of the Pope. His 
very tirst speech to the States described all heretics as equally the 
foes of God and of himself, and he Ciilled on the nobles and 
councillors to aid him, not in recalling them from their errors, but 
in their extermination. It was not an invitation to which, had it 
stood by itself, they were likely to respond very cordially, indicat- 
ing, as it seemed, a purpose to extend the authority of the 
Inquisition, and to put it in more active operation ; but, with 
singular impolicy, he contrived to connect it in their minds with 
fears for their civil liberties, by retaining in the Provinces a strong 
division of Spanish troops, whom, as the peace with France had 
relieved him from all foreign enemies, it was suspected that he. 
meant to employ to overawe .his Flemish subjects. Among 
the good qualities of the Flemings, docility had never been con- 
spicuous. Their freedom, whicli they liad long enjoyed in a 
degree unequalled by any other people, had made them somewhat 
wanton and turbulent. Being prosperous under it, they were 
naturally proud of it, and always on the watch to resist any 
attempt to tamper with it. Nor did they ever want leaders : each 
province and city had a cliief magistrate, known as governor, 
landgrave, or by some other suitable title, wJio, though in most capes 
appointed by the sovereign, was as jealous of the privileges of his 
countrymen as if he had owed his office to their election, so that 
not only was there a spirit of resit^tance always alive, but a system 
of organisation existed also, calculated to make that resistance 
effectual. 

But, though sovereign and subjects thus almost from the begin- 
ning took up an attitude of suspicion towards each other, the first 
few years of the reign were a period of comparative tranquillity. 
Philip himself quitted the Netherlands in 1559, never to return ; 
leaving his half-sister Margaret, duchess of Parma, Regent, with 
three councillors to assist her, of whom Granvelle, bishop of 
Arras, subsequently promoted to the Archbishopric of Mechlin 
and the rank of Cardinal, who had for some years been his own 
principal confidant, was so far the most able and influential mem- 



A.n. 1550.] CHAEACTEK OF AVILLIAM TKE SILENT. 101 

ber that lie became in fact her prime minister. Though he was a 
Fleming by birth, yet in his general views of civil and religious 
policy, in his de.sire to render the king's authority as absolute in 
the Netherlands as it was in Spain, and to compel unreserved and 
implicit obedience to the Church of Rome, he resembled Philip 
himself. In his disposition, and consequently in his mode of 
carrying out his views, there were some material differences 
between him and his master. Philip was reserved and gloomy 
in temper 5 harsh in demeanour; and considered any attempt at- 
conciliation where he conceived that he had a right to command 
derogatory to his dignitJ^ Granvelle, with quite as great self- 
command and power of concealing his thoughts and intentions, 
was frank and cordial, as well as refined and polished in his man- 
ners, and far too sagacious and able to be unconciliatory. Equally 
resolute to obtain his objects as far as possible, he was wise enough 
to take possibility into his calculations, and preferred to admit 
some modification of his wishes or demands to risking the whole 
by insisting on them without abatement. He, therefore, occasion- 
ally advised the duchess to relax some of the edicts wliich from 
time to time were transmitted from Spain, to suspend their en- 
forcement, and even to connive at their nonperformance. And slie 
received similar counsel from the most powerful of the nobles of 
the countr}'^, whom, as she knew him to have stood high in her 
father's esteem both for integrity and ability, she was also fre- 
quently in the habit of consulting ; and who, indeed, as governor 
of the important provinces of Holland and Zeeland, had a certain 
right to be listened to in transactions by which they were ailected, 
William, Prince of Orange, in whom the obligations of these 
kingdoms to one of his descendants give all Britons a peculiar 
interest, had attracted such notice from the late Emperor as a child 
of unusual promise, that Charles had induced his parents, though 
Lutherans, to entrust his education to his care. Accordingly, the 
boy from his twelfth year was bred up as a Roman Catholic; as 
he grew up he was first appointed a page in the Emperor's house- 
hold, was gradually employed in matters of public importance, and 
rose in the Emperor's favour so steadily, that, on the memorable 
occasion of the abdication, it was on his shoulder that Charles leant 
while delivering his parting address to the Estates-general at 
Brussels. In intellectual qualities he was not unlike Granvelle, 
whose brother had been bis preceptor; not perhaps so fertile in 
resource, but more far^iizhteil ; equally wa'-y and prudent, and 
equfdlv if not more skilful in the con'-ealment of his designs. So 
profound indeed was tlie reserve under which he w.o? wont to 
shroud his resolutions, that he obtained the nickname of The Silent, 
lie was firmly attached to the civil liberties of the Provinces ; on 



102 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1559. 

religious subjects he was less clear in his views. A Lutheran till 
twelve, a Roman Catholic since that time, but married to the 
heiress ^ of Maurice of Saxony, he was at this time hesitating 
whether to abide in his new religion or to return to his old one : 
and this unsettled state of belief naturally disinclined him to ap- 
prove of the persecution of any sect whatever ; he, therefore, took 
every opportunity of inculcating on the regent the impossibility of 
inducing the Flemings to submit to the Inquisition, and, as a 
matter of course, the impolicy of making such an attempt ; and, as 
her own disposition, when not blinded and perverted by bigoted 
servility to Somish doctrine, led her to prefer mildness to severity, 
though the period of her tenure of office presents a series of 
attempts to invade the privileges of the different Provinces, and of 
repeated issues of edicts of persecution, neither were carried out 
with the unrelenting steadiness which afterwards distinguished 
the Spanish policy. The invasion of the people's liberties was met 
by the provincial assemblies with remonstrances and petitions 
against the different measures, and with constant requests for the 
convocation of the Estates-general as the lawful council of the 
whole country. To this last request no regard was ever paid ; but 
some of the measures petitioned against were so manifestly in- 
fringements of the national law and of the charters granted by the . 
king's predecessors, that Philip was forced in some instances to give 
way, though, when he yielded, he marked out the chief petitioners, 
with a memory that never forgot nor pardoned offence, for future 
destruction; of the religious edicts, though she could neither 
prevent their issue nor procure their recall, the regent herself 
at times relaxed the execution. Still in spite of his occasional 
concessions and his frequent indulgences, enough remained to show 
Philip's purpose of introducing absolute kingly authority over the 
Provinces, a power unknown to the Netherlands, whose former 
rulers, whatever rank they might hold in other countries, were 
there contented to be but counts and dukes ; and of establishing 
the Inquisition in active exercise, a tribunal incompatible with the 
charters granted for the general administration of justice. And no 
relaxation of his edicts by the deliberate remissness of the regent 
could conceal the fact that from time to time men and women in 
different parts of the country were burnt alive for what was called 
heresy : and that, under the rule of one who was a foreigner and 
Avho despised both land and people, life and property were daily 
becoming less secure. For there was this essential difference be- 
tween Philip and his father : Charles was a Fleming by birth, and 

' She was his second wife. His first, Buren, who died, leaving him one 
whom he had married at eighteen, son. 
was a daughter of the Count de 



A.n. 1564.] PHILIP DISLIKES THE NETHERLATJ^DS. 103 

never forgot it, but "was attaclied to the country as his birthplace, 
preferred it to every other part of his dominions as his abode, and 
identified himself with the manners and feelings of the people : 
Philip, on the other hand, was a Spaniard by birth, habits, and 
prejudices. And no two nations inlllurope were more dissimilar in 
every quality and point of view than the Flemings and the 
Spaniards. Though, therefore, Charles was quite as desirous of 
despotic power as his son, .and, as shown by his atrocious chastise- 
ment of the insurrection at Ghent, quite as fierce in enforcing it ; 
and though he was a relentless persecutor of all who difi"ered from 
his views of religion, the Flemings balanced his general regard foT 
them against his tyranny, and endured it with wonderfully little 
complaint. Under Philip some fled from the land, and those who 
remained behind took up arms to overthrow his authority. As 
Granvelle was generally, though not quite correctly, regarded as 
the encourager of Philip in his stubborn rejection of all petitions 
and remonstrances, he became the chief object of the national 
hatred ; and, to propitiate the nobles, the duchess prevailed on the 
king to remove him ; but though his dismissal might have been 
accepted with thankfulness if it could have been taken to indicate 
any changes in the principles of the administration, it was wholly 
ineffectual when followed, as it almost instantly was followed, by 
despatches of the fiercest character from Spain enjoining the full 
execution of the edicts which visited heresy with death, without 
regard to age or sex. The Prince of Orange himself, when ordered 
to enforce the edicts in his provinces of Holland and Zeeland, 
positively refused to comply, expressing his resolution rather to 
resign his offices, and many other governors followed his ex- 
ample ; while a large body of nobles and burghers formed a league 
known in Flemish history as ' The Compromise,' binding them- 
selves by a solemn oath to resist the exercise of the Inquisition 
at the hazard of their fortunes and their lives. 

In civil conflicts a party name and a watchword are often of no 
trifling value : and these were now supplied to the malcontents by 
what seemed an accidental impulse, though it was perhaps 
guided by some little premeditation. The only open manifesta- 
tion of discontent that had yet taken place had in it something of 
a comic character, when, in ridicule of the ostentatious magnifi- 
cence affected by Granvelle, a number of the nobles, with Egmont 
at their head, adopted for their retainers a livery of equally 
ostentatious plainness of dark grey cloth with, for a shoulderknot, 
a flat piece of cloth of the same colour, embroidered with a head 
and a fool's cap, which, being of a scarlet colour, bore some 
resemblance to a cardinal's hat. And now, when the confederates 
of the Compromise had presented a petition to the regent, requesting 



104 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1566. 

tlie revocation of the recent edicts, to Avliicli tliey received but a 
curt answer, and when it became known that, on her expressing 
some alarm at the numbers of the petitioners, she had been re- 
assured by one of the council, who bade her be under no appre- 
hension, since they were only a crowd of beggars ; they, at one of 
their banquets where the disdainful speech was quoted, accepted 
the name, boasting that they were ready at any time to become 
beggars for the welfare of their country. And when one of the 
nobles, Count Brederode, a boisterous reveller, who had evidently 
prepared the whole scene, presently produced a beggar's wallet 
and a wooden bowl, such as the mendicant fraternity carried about 
to receive broken victuals, the company adopted those emblems 
with acclamation. The bowl was filled with wine, amid merry 
shouts of Vivent les Gueux it was drained eagerly by each indivi- 
dual, and from this 'tragic mirth,' as it proved to be, the re- 
bellion which ensued has been commonly known as the Revolt of 
the Beggars. 

Yet, in spite of these fierce demonstrations, there was again for 
a brief moment comparative tranquillity : a calm before the coming 
storm : during which Margaret, agaiu shrinking from putting the 
king's edicts into full execution, was even trying to obtain bis and 
the confederates' acquiescence in a modification of them, when she 
was suddenly exasperated into a readiness and even an eagerness 
to deal as sternly with the recusants as Philip himself could 
desire, by the fanatical outbreak of the Reformers of the province 
of Flanders, who, in August of the same year, fell upon all the 
churches in the district, breaking the images, in imitation of the 
Iconoclasts of old, whose name they assumed, defacing all the or- 
naments on the church walls ; and, as the cathedral at Antwerp 
was pre-eminent for every kind of beauty above all other buildings 
of the class, reserving for that their most furious vehemence : 
overthrowing the altar, destroying the organ, reputed the finest 
instrument in Europe, and, with strange irreverence, breaking 
into fragments a statue of the Saviour himself The contagion 
spread through other Provinces ; where churches were so ruth- 
lessly dealt with it was hardly to be expected that monasteries 
and convents would receive more merciful treatment, and before 
the end of the week many of the fairest cities in the southern 
Provinces bore the appearance of having been sacked by an enemy, 
though no enemy since the time of the Vandals would thus 
have selected all the most beautiful objects as the special mark for 
their hostility. It was hardly to be wondered that Margaret 
should look on sucb atrocities not merely as a sacrilegious profana- 
tion, but as a personal insult ; and, though the Prince of Orange 
was so far from being connected with it that, being at Antwerp on 



i.D. 2568.] WILLIAM LEAVES THE NETHERLANDS. 105 

tlie first day of the riots, he exerted himself vigorously to repress 
them, and, if he could have remained, would in all probability 
have been able to save the sacred buildings in that city, she 
now became suspicious of him, and wrote to her brother in dis- 
paraging and distrustful terms of both him and Egmont. The 
prince, if harmless as a dove, was also as wise as a serpent ; he 
was not above encountering those whom he knew or suspected to 
be his enemies with their own weapons, and, having a great com- 
mand of money, was able to bribe and keep in his pay some of 
Philip's secretaries, so that scarcely any letter was written or re- 
ceived by the king in Spain that was not communicated to him. 
lie at once st' od on his guard ; though the duchess was ignorant 
of the fact, he had recently returned to the Lutheran faith ; and, 
believing his destruction to be resolved on, he took care from this 
time forth never to place himself in the power of either king or 
regent. In one point he differed from the policy of his enemies, 
since he at all times preserved a regard for truth and honesty ; 
when, at the opening of the next year, Margaret sought to exact 
from all the nobles an oath of implicit obedience to Philip what- 
ever his commands might be, though Egmont took it, he refused 
it ; and, as after such a refusal he saw no safety for himself in 
the Netherlands, he withdrew to Germany, earnestly impressing 
on Egmont, for whom he had a sincere regard, the necessity of a 
similar caution ; but warning him in vain. 

The duchess did not remain long after hhn. The outbreak at 
Antwerp had been, not a revolt, but merely a riot, which, the very 
same week that the prince quitted the country, she had chastised 
with great severity, rasing to the ground all the churches of the 
Reformers ; putting to death numbers of those accused of partici- 
pation in the outrages ; and treating the Protestants throughout 
the land with such merciless rigour, that thousands of the most 
industrious citizens, the sinews of the country, began to fly to 
foreign shores ; more than one body of emigrants seeking an 
asylum in England, and repaying her protection by opening new 
sources of manufacturing wealth to her docile workmen. The emi- 
grants, however, were flying, not so much from her, as from one 
whom they understood to be on his way to succeed her in the govern- 
ment, and whose evil reputation had already preceded him, though 
as yet he had had no opportunity of showing to what wide- 
sweeping and relentless ferocity fanatical bigotry can steel the 
hearts of those invested with authority. The duchess had more 
than once proposed to resign her otfice ; hoping, indeed, that 
Philip would return in person for a time to the country to deal 
with all difficulties on the spot ; but the king, who greatly pre- 
ferred Spain, was not inclined to grant her prayer, till the out- 



106 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1567. 

rages committed at Antwerp led him to believe that a stronger 
hand than hers was necessary to crush so turbulent a people as he 
would have them crushed ; and in the summer of 1567, the Duke 
of Alva was sent, -with an army officered by picked veterans, to 
take upon himself the military command in the Netherlands, 
which was soon augmented by the addition of the supreme civil 
authority likewise. It is from the arrival of Alva that the Revolt 
of the Netherlands may be said to date. In Charles's war on the 
Protestants in Germany we have seen him more than once bearing 
a part in the most important operations, in which he had fully 
established a reputation for high military skill, erring, if he erred 
on any side, in excess of caution. But he had equally made him- 
self a name for unsparing cruelty, and was known to have advised 
Charles to chastise the insurrection of Ghent, though the city 
was the Emperor's birthplace, and in populousness and general 
importance inferior to no other in his wide dominions, by an utter 
destruction of the city, and the decimation of the inhabitants. He 
was not less conspicuous for dissimulation and perfidy than for 
cruelty. And he now descended on the unhappy Provinces of 
■which he was appointed governor, resolved to reduce them to 
the state of a desert, if milder measures should prove insufficient 
to enforce uniform obedience to the king's civil authority, and the 
universal adoption of the king's religion. 

He began with a rapidity which verified the Prince of Orange's 
■worst forebodings and most anxious warnings to his friends ; and 
his first measures showed with painful distinctness that no past 
services, no general obedience, not even the most cordial agree- 
ment with the king on questions of religion, could outweigh a 
single act of resistance. Count Egmont, as we have seen, had 
greatly contributed to one brilliant victory overjhe French ; another 
had been w^holly achieved by his prowess. He was a zealous 
Roman Catholic ; as governor of Flanders and Artois, over which 
he had been placed by Philip himself, he had been especially 
rigorous and unsparing in his chastisement of the Iconoclasts; 
having been recently sent on a mission to Spain, ever since his 
return he had sought every opportunity to express his confidence 
in Philip's justice and general humanity ; he had taken the oath 
of implicit obedience, ■which Orange had refused ; and, in spite of 
his friendship for the prince, he had notoriously rejected his 
warning invitation to make common cause with him for the 
common safety. But he had signed the petition for the removal 
of the Spanish troops, and, as Alva had again brought in a 
foreign army, it was perhaps feared that he might renew his re- 
monstrances against conduct so much at variance with the constitu- 
tion of the land. Count Horn had no such military services as 



A.D. 1567.] EXECUTION OF EGMONT AND HOEN. 107 

those of Egmont to boast; but he had beeu as diligent as 
his friend in quelling the tumults of the fanatics, and was of 
unquestioned fidelity to the Roman Catholic faith. But he too 
had once remonstrated against some infringement of the national 
liberties ; and, while chastising the Iconoclasts at Tournay, he 
had allowed the Protestant preachers to hold their meeting- 
houses outside the city walls ; though some of the king's edicts had 
declared the toleration of heretical preaching under any circum- 
stances an act of treason. There were hardly two men in the 
country who had done greater service to the government, or who 
could be more surely relied on as its supporters in all measures 
which were not flagrant violations of every law known in the 
country. 

I have said that Alva was rapid in his dealings. It was not till the 
twenty-second of August that he reached Brussels, and on the ninth 
of September, having, during the interval, exerted himself to disarm 
anysuspicions which they might have entertained by the most studied 
courtesy, he suddenly arrested botli Egmont and Horn, threw them 
into close confinement, and in the summer of the ensuing year 
brought them to trial on charges of treason as ridiculous as have ever 
been adduced against any criminal whom it was predetermined to 
condemn. For their destruction had been arranged before Alva had 
left Madrid ; and to ensure it they were brought before a council 
which he had created on purpose, and to "syhich the people had 
already given the name of the Council of Blood. There could be 
no more flagrant violation of law, even of that law which Philip 
was most especially bound to maintain, than the arraignment of 
Egmont before such a tribunal, for he was a knight of the Golden 
Fleece, then accounted the noblest Order in Christendom, the 
statutes of which, framed by Philip's predecessors, expressly for- 
bad a knight of the brotherhood to be tried for any offence what- 
ever by any other court than the chapter of the Order, But in a 
proceeding throughout iniquitous an illegality more or less made 
no difference. As if it had been Alva's purpose to parade his utter 
disregard of all justice, the property of his prisoners was confiscated 
before they were brought to trial. Indeed, if it were possible to 
add to the infamy of the massacres which marked the whole 
period of the duke's government, such addition would bo supplied 
by the circumstance that many of the executions were dictated by 
no other motive but sordid covetousness. He promised to transmit 
to the treasury at Madrid half a million of ducats a year, as the 
proceeds of the confiscation of the property of those whom he 
would put to death. The counts were both condemned, and on the 
ninth of June were executed in the great square of Brussels, to the 
norror and grief of the citizens, by whom both were well known 




108 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1567. 

and highly esteemed, and with whom Egmont's chivalrous char- 
acter and brilliant exploits had made him especially popular ; and 
to the amazement of foreigners, who marvelled at the folly of the 
king who thus, at a time when his relations with other countries 
were in a most unsettled state, deprived himself of one of his most 
distinguished warriors and most faithful servimts. Their feeling 
was pithily expressed by the French ambassador at Brussels, who 
wrote to a friend that ' he had seen the head fall of the man who 
had twice made France tremble.' It is alleged that personal 
motives contributed to bring Egmont to his death ; that Alva did 
iiim the honour to be jealous of his fame as a warrior, and remem- 
bered that in one or two contests of skill in arms lie had been 
worsted by him : and it is affirmed, too, that the duke, when, on 
the night before the execution, the Countess of Egmont, a princess 
allied with the greatest houses in Germany, hearing of the doom 
that had been pronounced, fell at the duke's feet to implore mercy 
for her husband, the father of her eleven children, he dismissed her 
with the assurance that the count would be released on the 
morrow, which the unhappy lady looked on as a promise of com- 
fort,^ not dreaming that any human being could be of a nature so 
fiendish as to insult her misery with such cruel irony. But few 
could fathom the remorseless ferocity of Alva : 

There was a laughing devil in his sneer 
That raised emotions both of rage and fear, 
And, when his frown of hatred darkly fell, 
Hope witlierLng fled and Mercy sighed farewell. 

The execution of these two great nobles caused one general 
absorbing feeling of indignation throughout the whole country. 
But even before they were brought to trial, Alva's cruelty to others 
had already raised a revolt against his and his master's authority'. 
He had expressed to the king his wish that ' every man as he lay 
down at night and rose in the morning might feel that at any hour 
his house might fall and crush him.' ^ And the Council of Blood 
in a very few weeks reduced every man in the Netherlands to that 
state. We hold the memory of our Queen Mary in abhorrence, 
and have stigmatised her name with an epithet of undying infamy, 
because in three years she put 277 persons to death for their 
religion. Scarcely a week elapsed in the Netherlands in which 

1 Motley reports this storj"- with Philip, followed up as it was by 

evident belief, but admits that it rests actions fully corresponding, prove 

on the authority of a single writer — that no cruelty that can be imputed 

Hoofd, and adds that, ' for the honour to him is incredible, 
of humanity, one would wish to ^ Con-espondance de Philippe II., 

think it false.' Rise of Dutch Re- ii. 4, quoted by Prescott, Philip II., 

public, ii. 199. But such language ii. 207. 
as that quoted from liis letter to 



A.D. 1567.J PERSECUTION IN THE NETHERLANDS. 109 

Alva and his tribunal of blood did not exceed that number. On 
one morninf? eighty-four persons at Valenciennes were sentenced 
to death. On Ash Wednesday 500 were condemned at Brussels. 
Small towns could furnish thirty or forty victims to the execu- 
tioner in a single day. So unprecedented already was the slaughter 
that even in the beginning of March 1568, when Alva had been 
scarcely six months in the country, the Emperor Maximilian, him- 
self a Roman Catholic, addressed a formal remonstrance to the 
king on the subject, as his dignity entitled him to do, since the 
Netherlands were a part of the Germanic body. Tt received an 
answer which was an insult to the remonstrant from its defiance of 
truth and common sense, and which cut oS all hope from the 
miserable Flemings. Philip declared that what he had done had 
been done ' for the repose of the Provinces, that no one who knew 
the facts could accuse him of severity, and that he would not 
change his conduct though the whole world should fall in ruin 
around him/ and almost on the same day he published a new edict, 
confirming a decree of the Inquisition which condemned all the 
inhabitants of the Netherlands to death as heretics, with the ex- 
ception of a few persons who were named. The historian who 
records the fact truly remarks, that this edict is probably the most 
concise death-warrant ever framed. In their utter despair, the 
Flemings implored the aid of the Prince of Orange, who, as I have 
mentioned, had quitted the country. He was more independent 
of Philip than other nobles, possessing as he did a considerable 
estate in France where his principality of Orange was situated, 
and, in right of his wife, still more important territories in Germany. 
And he was now residing at Dillenbourg, in Nassau, in safety from 
Philip's threats, and from the formal sentence, which in addition 
to the general condemnation of the whole people, the Council of 
Blood had just pronounced against him by name. But he resolved 
that in such an emergency it did not become him to weigh his 
own safety against the claims his countrymen had on his exertions. 
After a few weeks energetically spent in levying troops and raising 
money to maintain them, he published a document which he en- 
titled his ' Justification,' and which stated his own case and that 
of the Provinces with a most convincing clearness ; and at the end 
of April he took the field at the head of a small force, composed of 
French Huguenots, Flemish exiles who had been banished by 
sentences which though undeserved they might look upon as 
merciful, and German mercenaries : a motley band, whom it re- 
quired a sanguine confidence in the justice of his cause to enable 
him to regard as fit to contend for a single moment with the 
trained veterans of Alva, even had the skill of the commanders 
been equal, which was far from being the case. 



110 MODEEN HISTOKY. [a.b. 1568. 

Thus in the spring of 1568 began that terrible war which for 
forty years desolated what, in spite of gi-eat natural disadvantages, 
had hitherto been one of the most prosperous countries of Europe. 
I do not propose to dwell on many of its details ; to do so would 
require volumes, nor is there any great instruction to be derived 
from the contemplation, after the actors have passed from the 
stage, of battle after battle and siege after siege presenting nearly 
the same features. And, indeed, the pitched battles were few. At 
the outset Count Louis of Nassau, the prince's brother, defeated 
and slew Count Aremberg, the Spanish governor of the province 
of Groningen, very nearly on the spot on which, in the palmy days 
of Rome, the fierce valour of Arminius had annihilated the legions 
whose loss was so deeply imprinted on the heart of Augustus ; and 
Alva had avenged the disaster by so complete a rout of Louis at 
Jemmingen, that more than half of the rebel army was slaughtered 
on the field, and Louis himself only escaped a capture, which 
would have delivered him to the scaffold, by swimming the Ems, 
and escaping with a mere handful of troops, all that were left of 
his army, into Germany. But after dealing this blow, which was 
struck partly in vengeance, and partly as a warning to terrify the 
rebels by so fearful a proof how unequal they were to the conflict, 
Alva rarely fought a battle in the open field. He prefeiTed show- 
ing the superiority of his generalship by defying the endeavours of 
the prince and his brothers to bring him to action, miscalculating, 
indeed, the eventual consequences of such tactics, and believing 
that the protraction of the war must bring the rebels to his 
sovereign's feet by the utter exhaustion of their resources ; while 
the event proved that it was Spain which was exhausted by the 
contest, that kingdom being in fact so utterly prostrated by con- 
tinued draining of men and treasure which it involved, that her 
decay may be dated from the moment when Alva reached the 
Flemish borders. 

His career in the Netherlands seemed to show that, warrior 
though he was, persecution was more to his taste than even 
victory. Victorious, indeed, he was so far as never failing to 
reduce every town which he besieged, and to baffle every design 
of the prince which he anticipated, though William or his officers 
surprised more than one place of importance which he never ex- 
pected to be attacked, and some of which, such as the important 
ports of Brill and Flushing, were never recovered by the Spaniards 
during the whole war. While every triumph which he gained 
was sullied by a ferocious and deliberate cruelty, of which the 
history of no other general in the world affords a similar example. 
In the frenzy of evil passions, excited by long resistance and by 
the maddening exultation of success, it has happened that the 



A.D. lAeS.] CEUELTY OF ALVA. Ill 

most resolute commanders at the moment of a victorious assault 
have been unable to restrain their troops from deeds of outrage 
and horror ; but they have strictly forbidden such crimes before, 
and, as far as lay in their power, have severely chastised them 
afterwards. But whenever Alva captured a town, he himself 
enjoined his troops to show no mercy either to the garrison or to 
the peaceful inhabitants. Every atrocity which greed of rapine, 
wantonness of lust, and bloodthirsty love of slaughter could devise 
was perpetrated by his express direction, as if his desire had been 
to determine by actual experiment whether his soldiers or his 
judges and executioners were more ingenious in their devices of 
cruelty. For those who passed sentence in the courts of law, and 
those who executed them, were not content with inflicting the 
ordinary forms of death. As new crimes were invented, for not 
only was any neglect of the Romish ceremonial pronounced 
heresy, and the slightest remonstrance against any notorious 
illegality adjudged to be treason, but to give alms to heretic or 
traitor, even to write a letter to a fugitive who might have been 
prosecuted as such had he remained in the country, though the 
letter- writer might be the wife or mother or child of the exile, 
involved the sympathiser in the same condemnation ; so also new 
punishments or rather tortures were devised, and daily inflicted. 
Some of the sentenced victims were hung up by the legs and so 
starved to death ; some had their flesh torn ofl' by hot irons ; some 
were roasted before slow fires ; some had limb after limb broken 
by heavy blows, and were then left to expire in agony ; some were 
flayed alive, and their skins were made into drums whose noise 
might drown the cries of their fellow-sufferers. And of these 
almost incredible atrocities the infamy belongs equally to the 
general and to the king. Alva may be said to have superintended 
them, but they were enjoined in general terms by Philip before 
they were inflicted, and approved and commended by him in 
detail afterwards. 

It was not to be expected that such wickedness should succeed 
in the end; though Alva, with premature exultation, erected a colos- 
sal statue to himself in the citadel of Antwerp, ' for having,' as the 
inscription on the pedestal aflirmed, ' extinguished sedition, chas- 
tised rebellion, restored religion, secured justice, established peace.' 
Buthehaddifliculties to encounter, besides those of his military opera- 
tions, and such as he was less skilful in meeting. He soon began 
to be in want of money. A fleet laden with gold and silver was 
driven by some French privateers into an English harbour, where 
Elizabeth at once laid her hands on it. If it belonged to her ene- 
mies, she had a right, she said, to seize it : if to her friends, to 
borrow it (she had not quite decided in which light to regard the 



112 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.T). 1568, 

Spaniards, but the logic was irresistible, and her grasp irremove- 
able), and, to supply the deficiency, Alva had recourse to expedi- 
ents which injured none so much as himself. To avenge himself 
on the Queen, he issued a proclamation forbidding all commercial 
intercourse between the Netherlands and England ; the model, 
one might fancy, of the Berlin decree, by which, in the present 
century, Napoleon tried to annihilate the trade of the stubborn 
islanders ; but his prohibition damaged the Flemings more than 
the English merchants, and in so doing inflicted loss upon himself, 
by disappointing bis calculations of the extent to which he could 
make the country supply hitn with the means of urging war 
against itself. For he at the same time endeavoured to compel 
the States to impose, for his use, a heavy tax on every description 
of property, on every transfer of property, and even on every 
article of merchandise as often as it should be sold : the last im- 
post, in the Provinces which were terrified into consenting to it, so 
entirely annihilating trade that it even roused the disapproval of his 
own council ; and that, finding themselves supported by that body, 
even those Provinces which had complied, retracted their assent. 
lie was roused to a pitch of unusual fury by such a reaction ; to 
strike terror into those who so offended, he prosecuted the whole 
city and province of Utrecht before his favourite Council of Blood, 
and pronounced a sentence which adjudged them, as guilty of 
treason, to have forfeited both their public charters and privileges, 
and the private property of every individual citizen ; but even this 
monstrous sentence was far from producing tlie profit expected 
from it : and after a time he was forced first to compromise his 
demands for a far lower sum tlian that at which he had estiniated 
the produce of his taxes, and at last to renounce even that. 

He was bitterly disappointed and indignant, and began to be 
weary of his post. Even his iron nature was moved by the con- 
sciousness of the universal hatred with which he was regarded by 
every human being in the Netherlands, while he could not conceal 
from himself that his adversary was daily growing stronger. It is 
not a new observation that no grievance is so sure to provoke 
resistance as one that touches the pocket ; and now those who had 
borne, with a meekness which was almost abject and base, to see 
their fellcw-citizens slaughtered by hundreds at a time on cJiarges 
of heresy which they felt to be iniquitous, and of treason which 
they knew to be false, joined heartily in the revolt when they 
saw their trade ruined by his edicts, and their wealth torn from 
them by his new system of taxation; while every subject lost to 
the king was an adherent gained to the prince who, though often 
baffled and defeated, amid all discouragements and difficulties, 
kept up a bold face and a stout heart; though forced, from in- 



A.D. 1573.] EESIGNATION OF ALVA. 113 

abilitj'-, to pay fhem, to disband his foreign mercenaries, he found 
their places tilled by recruits whom Alva's tyrannical exactions 
drove into his ranks ; and, in the sixth year of the war, having 
counterbalanced the loss of Zutphen, Naarden, and Haarlem 
(where the cruelties perpetrated by Alva would alone be sufficient 
to cover his name with undying infamy), by the acquisitions of 
Brill and Flushing, which have been mentioned, he was able to 
present a more formidable front to his enemy than at the begin- 
ning of the war. That he should have accomplished so much was 
the more extraordinary, that he was wholly without allies. He 
had hoped for aid from England ; but Elizabeth, though she had 
no objection to seize the Spanish treasure-ships, and though she 
knew well that in retaliation Philip had employed an emissary to 
assassinate her, could not shake off her habitual irresolution, nor the 
niggardly spirit which she had inherited from her grandfather, so 
as to determine to give the Flemings aid, which must cost her 
money : while Charles of France, who had led him to hope for 
substantial assistance, and who, had he known Philip's secret 
designs, had as good cause as Elizabeth herself to look on the 
Spaniard as his most dangerous foe, gave ample proof of the im- 
possibility of relying on his promises by the fearful massacre of 
St. Bartholomew, The prince had only his own resources to rely 
upon ; but even Alva could not disguise from himself that they 
were daily proving more and more sufficient, and confessed his 
moral defeat by preferring continual requests to be allowed to 
resign his post. To fill up the measure of his disgust, a squadron 
which had been recently equipped, under the prince's sanction, 
' The Begffars of the Sea,' as its commanders named it, gave his 
fleet, though superior in numbers, a severe defeat in the Zuyder 
Zee, took the admiral. Count Bossu, prisoner, and held him as a 
hostage for some nobles who had recently fallen into Alva's hands, 
and whom in consequence he dared not execute. He renewed his 
entreaties to be relieved ; and, at the end of the year 1573, Philip 
granted them, and replaced him by Don Luis de Requesens. Alva 
boasted that during his government he had executed 18,600 pri- 
soners. It is believed that he greatly understated the number; 
while those who had perished by the hands of his soldiers defied 
calculation. And, as if the universal hatred which he had drawn 
upon himself were not enough unless he added contempt to it, he 
contrived by an act of paltry dishonesty to prove that he was as 
contemptible as he was detestable. He had incurred great debts 
in Amsterdam, and made public proclamation that all demands 
against him were to be sent in on a given day ,• on the day before 
that appointed he quitted the city ; thus defrauding, and in many 
instances ruining, his creditors, who however might perhaps com- 



114 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1576 

fort themselves by the reflection that it was something to have 
saved their lives, when their debtor could as easily have murdered 
as cheated th&m. - - 

Eequesens governed the country but a short time, dying of a 
fever at the beginning of 1576. His government was distin- 
guished by two events; first, the proposal of a negotiation for 
peace, which however came to nothing, since the prince regarded 
it, as the result of former proposals of a similar kind justified him 
in regarding it, as merely a device to recover Brill, Flushing, and 
one or two other towns of great strength and importance without 
fighting for them. Such manifest traps for the unwary proved, 
perhaps, that the king, or at least his advisers, saw no safe way 
out of the revolt which they had excited, and were not indisposed 
to relinquish war, if they could be allowed to do so on their own 
terms ; but they led to nothing more, and tranquillity was yet 
many years distant. 

The second event was of a greater practical importance. At 
the end of 1574 the Provinces in revolt formally renounced their 
allegiance to Spain; and, in an assembly held at Delft, in Novem- 
ber, appointed the Prince of Orange their governor and regent, 
conferring on him the entire control of the war, with a settled 
revenue for the maintenance of the armj'^ and of the needful civil 
establishments. And, though negotiations for peace on terms of 
reunion with Spain were more than once renewed from the earnest 
endeavours of the Emperor to mediate between the parties, and 
save so important a territory for his kinsman, they all proved 
futile ; and from the day of the meeting at Delft the Provinces 
may be looked upon as a practically independent power. 

The successor of Requesens governed the country for even a 
shorter period than he ; but the period of his rule is memorable, 
since it was in his time that the affairs of the country first became 
closely connected with foreign politics. The governor was Don 
John, a half-brother of Philip, being a natural son of the late 
Emperor ; illustrious throughout Europe for his recent victory at 
Lepanto, the first blow^ which checked the advance of the 
Moslems, who had previously seemed to threaten all Christendom. 
But in one respect his appointment is rather an, episode in the war, 
than a portion of it. It seems probable that, though his renown 
as a warrior and a conqueror was splendid, Philip sent him to the 
Netherlands, not so much to maintain his power and to extend his 
own fame, as in order to remove from his sight one of whom he 
was jealous, and perhaps to find occasion in his failure to disgvace 
him ; while Don John, though eager to win fresh credit by new 
achievements on a new scene of action, valued the glory which he 

1 V. infra, c. 13. 



A.D. 1576.] OBJECTS OF DON JOHN. 115 

anticipated, not for its own sake, nor as a means of confirming his 
brother's authority, but as a stepping-stone to procure himself an 
independent kingdom. 

He was thirty-one years of age ; of remarkable personal beauty 
and gi-ace ; and of a disposition in which the thirst for further 
celebrity and aggrandisement, natural in on© who had already 
achieved such distinction, was largely mingled with more romantic 
feelings. The Helen of modern Europe, Mary of Scotland, peer- 
less in beauty, unsurpassed in grace, unequalled in the fascinations 
which she exerted over all who approached her, had now been for 
eight years treacherously detained, if imprisoned were as yet too 
harsh a word, by one whom Protestants could not affirm to have 
any lawful authority over her, and whom Roman Catholics natu- 
rally asserted to be influenced by no feeling but that her prisoner's 
rights to the English crown were superior to her own. To restore 
the beauteous enchantress to liberty ; to obtain her hand as the 
meed of his service ; to establish her pretensions to the throne 
of both divisions of Britain, and, with her, to reign over an 
United Kingdom, of which one portion had formerly held a King of 
France in chains, and had fixed a Spanish sovereign on his throne, 
were the objects which originally prompted Don John to solicit 
the government of a country so distracted by civil war, and which 
for the most part regulated his general policy and his separate 
actions while holding it. 

But he was not always master of events, though a shrewd judge 
of them. He at once discerned the real character of the contest in 
which he had embarked ; but the very week in which he reached 
the seat of his new government an event took place which added 
incalculably to the difficulty of his task. The straits in which 
Alva often found himself for money have been already mentioned ; 
but the Spanish troops who accompanied the Prince were little in- 
clined to make allowance for the financial embarrassments of their 
commanders. In the autumn of 1576 they had been many months 
without pay, and they broke out into open mutiny, in which their 
officers joined, if indeed they were not the real instigators of the 
outbreak. They threatened Brussels and the Coimcil of State, but 
found that city, as the capital, too strongly guarded. But with 
Antwerp, which was even wealthier, and, as such, a more tempting 
object of plunder, the case was different. The town was occupied 
by German troops, but the citadel, the strongest fortress in the 
country, was held by a Spanish garrison ; Sancho d'Avila, their 
commander, was one of the most forward mutineers, and he tam- 
pered so successfully with the German commander in the town 
that he at first joined in the conspiracy to disarm the citizens 
and seize the city. The Count de Champagny, a brother of Car- 



116 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1576. 

dinal Granveile, was g-overnor of the city, and, being a Fleming 
himself, was as jealous as anyone of the presence of Spanish troops 
in the country. He obtained intelligence of what was in agita- 
tion, and, greatly alarmed, sent in haste for some regiments of 
Walloons and of Germans which formed part of the garrison of 
Brussels, which was now safe ; and worked with such adroitness 
on the jealous feelings always subsisting between Germans and 
Spaniards, that the German ofEcers who had promised to join 
d'Avila repented of their treason, and agreed to stand by him in 
resisting the soldiers of the citadel ; so that the mutiny at last 
assumed the aspect of war between the city and the citadel. 

D'Avila was prepared for such a contest : he had secured the 
aid of other bands of Spaniards who had been distributed among 
tlie neighbouring towns and forts, and had thus collected a force 
of about 6,000 men ; in number not more than those who stood 
arrayed under Champagny for the defence, but infinitely superior 
to them in military discipline and experience, and in that hardi- 
hood which a knowledge of the lawlessness of an enterprise, and 
a consciousness that therefore there is no safety but in success, 
are calculated to engender. The fortifications of the city were in. 
very bad condition, and Champagny, who, from the first appear- 
ance of danger, had exerted himself energetically to put them in 
repair, liad but half accomplished his work, when, on the morning of 
thethirdof November, the verj^ same day on which Don John reached 
Luxembourg, d'Avila led on his battalions to the assault. What 
ensued hardly deserves the name of a fight : some of Champagny's 
Germans stood their ground stoutly for a while, but the Walloons 
fled without striking a blow. The mutineers mastered the walls, 
poured into the town ; and though the citizens, headed by the 
leading merchants, ran to arms, and fought gallantly in defence of 
their homes, untrained valour has never yet proved a match for 
discipline, and their unavailing courage but added to the slaughter 
and the horror. The Spaniards pretended to be exasperated at their 
resistance, but they did not require the heat of conflict to sharpen 
their ferocity. Their battle-cry, as they swarmed up the ramparts, 
had been, ' Santiago, Spain ! for blood, for fire, for plunder,' ^ 
and massacre and havoc were almost as delightful to them as 
rapine. Before night they were masters of the city. The city 
was in flames ; a thousand houses were seen on fire at once. 
Scores of the wretched inhabitants perished in the conflagration : 
while, so hideous was the cruelty of the conquerors to those 
who fell into their hands, so prolific of every kind of torture and 
indignity was Spanish invention, that those who thus died were 

1 ' Santiago, Santiago ! Espana, h sacco.' Motley's Hise of Dutch 
Espana ! a sangre, a came, a fuego, Republic, iii. 108. 



A.D. 1577.] THE SPANISH FUEY AT AINTWEEP. 117 

perhaps not tliose whose fate was the most miseral)le. Virgil 
has told us of the sack of Troy, when, exulting in the termination 
of their toil of ten long years, the furious Greelis gave temple and 
palace to the flames : 

crudelis iitique 
Luctus, ubique pivor, ct plurima mortis imago.' 

But, furious as was JSTeoptolemus, avenging the death of his sire, 
and fierce as were his followers (as men might well be whj 
believed that some of their Gods delighted in slaughter), no 
heathen warriors ever perpetrated, nor did any heathen poet ever 
conceive such savage barbarities as the Spaniards now inflicted on 
the very citizens whom they had been appointed to defend, and 
whose sole crime was the possession of wealth sufiicient to com- 
pensate their murderers for the disappointments caused to them 
by the bad faith or insolvency of their employers. It would be as 
needless as painful to dwell in detail on the horrors of the next day 
or two, as they have been handed down by contemporary histo- 
rians. It is indeed hard to say with precision how many thousands 
perished, but no one was spared who either had money, or jewels, 
or plate, or who was so dear to those who possessed such treasures 
that his or her torture could be expected to procure a discovery of 
any secret hoards. Nor can the extent of the destruction wroug-ht be 
estimated, except in general terms. The Spaniards were not dis- 
appointed in their expectations of plunder ; and it is believed that 
the six thousand soldiers whom d'Avila led on divided between 
them property to the value of nearly six millions. It seems cert'iin 
that still more was destroyed by the conflagration ; but the entire 
damage cannot be measured even by these enormous figures, for it 
was not of a temporary character. The city, which a year before 
far exceeded any other in Europe in commercial importance, was 
ruined for ever ; even peace, when it was restored, could not bring 
bade its prosperity. At a subsequent period in the war the city 
endured a protracted siege, which attracted the eyes of all Europe ; 
but twelve months of incessant attacks, directed by perhaps the 
greatest captain that Spain had ever placed at the head of an 
army, effected no devastation comparable to the work of these 
two days ; and the decay of the great city is always traced, not 
to Parma's triumph over it, but to the Spanish Fury, as it was 
called, the attack upon it by d'Avila, whose. duty it had been to 
protect it. 

But, grievous as was its ruin to one as anxious for the prosperity 
of the whole country as William of Orange, in one respect what 

' All parts resound with tumults, plaints, and fears, 
And gnslv death in sundry shapes appears. 

Dryden, jEn. ii. 498 ' 



118 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1578. 

had happened greatly assisted his views by the conviction which 
it forced on the generality of the States, that similar danger im- 
pended over them all if they did not avert it by timely vigilance 
and union ; and a new league was instantly formed, by a treaty 
known as the ' Pacification of Ghent,' subsequently extended and 
developed by a second, called the 'Union of Brussels,' by which 
the whole of the Provinces, with the exception of Luxem- 
bourg, pledged themselves to compel the governor to the observ- 
ance of all the ancient charters of the land, and to the dismissal 
of the Spanish soldiery j while those States which adhered 
to the Popish doctrines further engaged to insist on complete 
toleration and religious liberty being for ever secured to those who 
had embraced the new opinions. For the time the Spanish Fury 
had extinguished the most bitter of all animosities, religious 
dissension, and had doubled both the moral and the real strength 
of the prince, who was seen to be devoting himself to no other 
object but the establishment of general freedom, civU and religious, 
throughout the country. 

But the harmony thus established was of brief duration. Don 
John was shrewd enough to see that, if the constitutional grievance 
of the presence of the Spanish troops were removed, it would be 
easy to revive the ill-will between the different sects : and he 
was greatly aided in carrying out his views by a personal popularity 
which distinguished him very favorably from his predecessors. 
Alva was not only inhuman in disposition, but in demeanour was 
haughty, morose, and repellent ; formed, as it were, to be hated 
even by those who most appreciated his talents, and who coincided 
in his objects : Don John, on the other hand, was courteous, 
affable, and cordial in his manner ; entering, with apparent zeal, 
into the national sports and festivities, presiding at banquets, dis- 
playing on all suitable occasions graces, which in a prince are 
themselves virtues, and ' making,' as one of his secretaries wrote 
enthusiastically to Madrid, 'the hearts of the whole people his own.' 

Thus armed for the contest, he entered into it with equal judg- 
ment and vigour. He procured from Philip a document with the 
imposing title of The Perpetual Edict, which promised all the 
political advantages which the confederates aimed at in the treaties 
of Ghent and Brussels ; but which, while professing to gTant these 
demands in the matter of religion also, practically nullified the 
concessions which it announced by the stipulation that none were 
to be valid which should not promote the interests of the Catholic 
Church, which all the States were to swear to maintain as the 
national religion. Such a decree was too favorable to the views 
of the Roman Catholic Provinces, which were the great majority, 
Holland and Zeeland being the only States which were purely 



A.D. 1578.] THE PEEPETUAL EDICT. 119 

Protestant, not to be accepted by most of tbera ; and tbe natural 
refusal of Holland and Zeeland to accept it as a satisfactory com- 
promise, tended once more to divide them fx-om the rest : while the 
breach was widened by the jealousy which many of the wealthier 
nobles felt of the ascendency of the Prince of Orange. The prince, 
indeed, had easily brought his two Provinces to disown the edict, 
having been the more urgent with them to do so, because he dis- 
trusted Don John fully as much as his predecessors. He looked 
on the Bon's affability as mere hypocrisy, and on even the personal 
goodwill which he professed for himself as a mere trap to ensnare 
him. He believed him to be in his heart not only as faithless but 
as cruel as Alva himself, and he consequently began more earnestly 
than ever to seek the support of some foreign sovereign who should 
take the States under his protection. He would have preferred 
the alliance of Elizabeth ; but that was not to be obtained as yet. 
Fully occupied with her own dangers, she was observing France, 
and shaping her policy by the designs and practices of that king- 
dom, of which, at the moment, she was so much more afraid than 
of Spain, that her envoy assured Don John that her inclination 
was to aid him rather than the States. Orange then turned to 
France, hoping that Henry III. might accept the Protectorate for 
his brother Francis, duke of Anjou, the prince whom Elizabeth, 
in spite of her constant ridicule of his ugliness which amounted 
almost to deformity, was constantly professing a desire to marry. 
But in the meantime the Catholic nobles had opened a negotiation 
with the Archduke Matthias, the brother of Rudolph, who had just 
succeeded his father on the Imperial throne, and who was likely to 
be more acceptable to the people because he, as much as Philip, 
was a descendant of the Duchess Mary. Matthias eagerly accepted 
their invitation ; and at once hastened to the Netherlands, where 
Orange also cordially received him, though as both he and the 
Emperor were very young, the prince had probably less confidence 
in his being able to hold his ground than he would have felt in 
tlie case of Elizabeth or of a brother of the French monarch. 

Orange's own power had lately been considerably augmented by 
the great province of Flanders having elected him its stadtholder, 
while Brabant also had appointed him to the office of Ruward, 
a post conferring an authority so nearly supreme that it had gener- 
ally been confined to the heir of the existing sovereign. The 
people of Flanders, indeed, had been excited to enthusiasm in his 
favour, by his recent recovery of Antwerp. After the ' Fury,' the 
magistrates of that city had refused to admit any more foreign 
troops within the walls, and the new governor, de Liedekerke, 
who was believed to be secretly a Protestant, and was known to 
De a v;arm admirer of Orange, had by lavish bribes, disguised as 



120 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1678. 

payment of arrears which they could not obtain from their own 
government, induced the bulk of the garrison of the citadel to 
agree to evacuate that fortress. Those who had not yet been 
gained over, being one or two regiments whose officers were 
zealousl}'^ attached to Don John's views, while negotiations with 
them were still going on, were terrified by the sudden appearance 
of a strong squadron of the Beggars of the Sea, which just at the 
critical moment was seen sailing up the Scheldt. Without wait- 
ing to conclude the bargain, they fled with precipitation, some to 
Bergenopzoom, others to Breda, where, in the course of the next 
few weeks, both divisions surrendered : and those important cities 
and strongholds were thus secured to the confederate cause ; and, 
to save Antwerp itself from a repetition of the outrages from which 
it had so severely suffered, the portion of the citadel which looked 
towards and menaced the city was destroyed, that part only being 
left which could protect it against attack from the outside; and at 
the same time the statue which the vainglory of Alva had erected 
to himself, was broken into a thousand pieces, fragments of it 
being carried off and long preserved by different citizens as 
memorials of their undying hatred. 

It was a heavy blow to Don John, and his vexation was equalled 
by his indignation. In a tone of disappointment, which has some- 
thing comical in it when we remember the conduct that had been 
pursued in the Provinces for above ten years, he complained to his 
sister that ' in spite of all the good which had been done to this 
wicked people, they abhorred and dishonoured their natural 
sovereign Philip, and loved and obeyed the most perverse and ty~ 
rannical heretic and rebel on earth, the damned Prince of Orange.'' 
But he was too energetic to confine himself to profitless murmurs. 
On the eighteenth of January 1578, Matthias had been formally 
installed at Brussels as Governor-general; and Don Johnreason- 
ably thought that every day of his pi'esence in the capital was not 
only an insult to Philip, but an injury tending rapidly to the 
annihilation of the royal authority. He resolved at once to take 
the field ; he had recently received some considerable reinforce- 
ments, and one whose value was not to be measured by its mere 
numbers, since it was commanded by his nephew. Prince Alex- 
ander of Parma, who as its leader was to give the first proof of that 
pre-eminent military skill which established his own fame, and 
which, if the valour and sagacity of one man could have counter- 
balanced the impotence and folly of an entire government, might 
have preserved or recovered for his master the dominions which 
were already slipping from his grasp. Don John lost no time. 

1 ' Que es este condenado del Principe de Orange.' — Letter to the Empress, 
quoted bj' Motley, iii. 256. 



A.n. 1578.] THE BATTLE OF GEMBLOUX. 121 

The day week after the inauguration of the archduke at Brussels, 
he issued a proclamation calling on the people in all the Provinces 
to make their instant submission, and to array themselves at once 
under his banner ; and six days later, on the last day of January, 
he fell upon the army of the confederates at Gemblours, or Gem- 
bloax, near Namur. The two armies vs^ere as nearly as possible 
equal in numter, each consisting of about 18,000 infantry and 
2,000 cavalry. The commander-in-chief on the side of the States 
was a general named Grignies, a veteran of St. Quentin, aided, or 
hampered, by a number of nobles of no great military skill and no 
great idea of military subordination. The eldest son of the mur- 
dered Egmont commanded the cavalry. Don John in person led 
on his own troops, his banner bearing a crucifix for its ensign, with 
the arrogant inscription, ' With this standard I overthrew the 
Turks, with this will I overthrow the heretics.' The confederates 
were executing a retreat, when the vanguard of the Spaniards 
overtook them ; but while their rear was skirmishing with a small 
troop of horse, Alexander perceived that their main body Avas dis- 
ordered by the difficult character of the ground along which their 
line of march lay. Without vraiting for orders, he at once col- 
lected some regiments of cavalry, sent back an aide-de-camp to 
J)on John, to report that ' he had plunged into the abyss, to perish 
there, or to come forth victorious,' and fell upon the enemy with 
irresistible fury ; at the very first onset he brolce their squadrons, 
bej'ond the power of Egmont and of Grignies himself to rally 
them. As soon as they were routed, he turned upon the infantry, 
discouraged and yncovered by the defeat of the cavalry. A panic 
seized them ; they broke and fled in wild confusion without strik- 
ing a blow, leaving their standards, their guns, and 600 prisoners 
in the hands of the victor. Alexander pursued them oS the field 
with terrible slaughter ; it is said that the killed amounted to at 
least 7,000 men, while the victors scarcely lost a dozen of their 
number. So decisive a victory has rarely been gained by such a 
liandful of men, for the Spanish infantry never came into action at 
all. But Don John tarnished his own and his nephew's glory, and 
justified Orange's suspicion of his natural disposition, by his cruelty 
to his prisoners, every one of whom he slew in cold blood. 

Yet, though this victory was followed by the reduction of many 
of the chief towns on that side of the countiy, it rather increased 
than diminished the influence of William, who was not in the 
battle, since it was attributed not to his want of judgment, but to 
the mismanagement of the Catholic nobles who had interfered 
with, and in some notorious instances had counteracted, his plans. 
Even the very next week the great city of Amsterdam, which had 
hitherto stood aloof as a Catholic city in a Protestant state, joined 



122 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1578. 

him in the league against the Spaniards ; and (civil freedom in 
this instance requiting the obligarions imder which she had often 
lain to religious freedom) not only established toleration, but by the 
conversion of great nunjbers of her citizens, gave no small support 
to the doctrines of the Reformation. Towards the end of the sum- 
mer, Don John put himself at the head of a larger army than that 
which had scattered his enemies at Gemblours, to stamp out this 
augmented resistance. But he was fated to win no more victories, 
Q'owards the end of September he was attacked by a fever, which 
after a few days proved fatal. Many of his contemporaries be- 
lieved that he had been poisoned ; some accused Philip of the 
crime, more because so many assassinations, and that of Don John's 
secretary among them, had been so notoriously planned by him 
that no suspicion could possibly do him injustice, than because any 
reason could be alleged why the king should wish to get rid of 
one who was certainly serving him with great zeal, and with no 
inconsiderable success. Philip himself professed to suspect the 
Queen of England, who had at last shown a decided disposition to 
aid the States, and he executed two Englishmen on the charge of 
having been employed by Walsingham, Elizabeth's secretary of 
state, to commit the crime. Perhaps there is no more painful 
sign of the general wickedness of that age than is supplied by the 
fact that such suspicions were commonly hinted about at the death 
of every person of eminence. There not only is no proof whatever 
that Don John was murdered ; but there is every probability that 
he died a natural death, for the fever which was asserted to have 
carried him off was raging in his camp, and had proved fatal to 
gi-eat numbers of his soldiers before he himself succumbed to its 
attack. 



A.D. 15r8.] ALEXANDEE OF PAEMA. 123 



CHAPTER Yl. 
A.D. 1578 — 1609. 

DON JOHN on liis death-bed had directed that his nephew, 
Alexander of Parma, should exercise his authority till Philip's 
pleasure could be taken, Philip confirmed the nomination, though 
for a moment he thought of sending back the duchess, his mother, 
to resume her authority as regent, and of limiting the son's commis- 
sion to the direction of military affairs. But he soon found that 
the prince would not accept a divided command ; while the pride 
of the duchess would be more gratified by seeing the power in her 
son's hands, than by having its exercise again entrusted to herself. 
And in consequence Alexander, whom it will be more convenient 
to call by the title to which he soon succeeded, and by which he 
is generally known, of the Duke of Parma, now became Governor 
of the Netherlands, and by civil as well as military talents showed 
himself well qualified to discharge the various duties of that 
arduous ofiice. As a general he soon proved pre-eminent in skill 
above all other warriors of his day : as a statesman he was shrewd, 
farsighted, and wavy without being needlessly suspicious. In 
both capacities he was bold without rashness, and cautious without 
timidity : as a great prince, though naturally as haughty as any 
Spaniard, a far more arrogant race than his countrymen the 
Italians, he could yet, to serve his purpose, lay aside his pride, and 
win hearts by a condescending afl^ability. It is painful to add of 
one who had so many qualities of greatness, that he was as deeply 
tainted with the vices of falsehood and treachery as any of his 
countrymen, and that his very first triumph, the capture of Maes- 
tricht, which he took by surprise in the spring of 1579, proved 
him to be to the full as inhuman and merciless as Alva himself. 
The city was given up to his soldiers, who were enjoined to prac- 
tise pillage and murder as if they were virtues, and happy were 
those citizens whom a speedy deathstroke delivered from their 
truculent hands. 

Yet, for some time after the assumption of the government 
by Parma, the war languished. New conferences were opened at 
Cologne, with the professed hope that some means might be devised 



124 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1579. 

for accommodating the quarrel ; and during the negotiations, ab- 
surd attempts were made to detacli Orange from the cause of the 
States, and to induce him to be contented with making terms for 
himself, the negotiators assuring him that he could demand no 
conditions which they would not cheerfully grant. It was not a 
new proposal; it had been made before by Don John, who had pro- 
tested that the prince could not conceive the love that Philip was 
prepared to entertain for him. But Orange was well aware that 
Philip's real desire was to procure his assassination ; and, though 
he was by no means devoid of a desire for personal aggrandisement, 
his chief ambition had a nobler object, the acquisition of an 
honorable fame as the deliverer of his country from foreign 
tyranny, and the establishment not only of civil but also of religious 
freedom throughout the land. 

Tn some important points the diplomacy of each party was 
crowned with success. By an agreement that their ancient 
privileges should be respected, Parma succeeded in entirely de- 
taching the Walloon Provinces from the revolt; while Orange 
fully counterbalanced that disappointment by a new treaty, known 
as the Union of Utrecht, by which, in June 1579, the plenipoten- 
tiaries of Holland, Zeeland, Gelderland, Utrecht, Friesland, 
Groningen, and Overyssel, united in a closer alliance, offensive and 
defensive, than ever, with the avowed object of waging war against 
Philip : a treaty which, two yeai's and a half later, begot another, 
by which they formally renounced all allegiance to him, and 
proclaimed their own perpetual independence. But these ar- 
rangements only increased Orange's conviction of the necessity of 
placing at the head of the commonwealth thus formed, a foreign 
prince, who should be at once a constitutional ruler, and, by the 
aid which he would be able to ensure from his own countr}'', a 
protector. In spite of the avowed wishes of all the States com- 
posing the Union, he refused the government for himself; but, 
though the act would not have had the same appearance of self- 
abnegation, it may be doubted whether there would not have been 
as real disinterestedness in accepting it. It was not so enviable a 
post as to expose its occupant to the charge of indulging a greedy 
ambition ; and, even if it had been, a man's country, which has a 
claim on him to expose himself to danger and even to death in her 
service, has surely an equal right to expect that he will not shrink 
from possible misconstruction, And it seems clear that as 
sovereign of the whole commonwealth he would have enjoyed 
greater facilities for successfully resisting Philip and his generals 
than he could expect as Count of the two provinces of Holland and 
Zeeland, the only dignity which he could be prevailed on to 
accept. Howevei', his resolution on this point was unalterable ; 



4..D. 1584.] MUEDER OF WILLIAM THE SILENT. 125 

and, as Matthias had proved whollj^ unequal to the burden, and as his 
presence in the country brought it no aid, nor, apparently, even 
sympathy from the Emperor, the prince once more turned his 
eyes towards France ; and, though of all the sons of Catharine de 
Medici, the Duke of Anjou was perhaps the meanest in capacity 
and the most contemptible in character throughout his whole life, 
William prevailed to procure the despatch of an embassy to France to 
offer him the government, an honour which he willingly accepted ; 
hoping to be able to convert the limited authority proflered to him 
into a despotic sovereignty. 

William's refusal of the government was certainly mischievous 
to the country when it led to the imposition on it of a master, one 
of whose first acts was a treacherous attack on the important city of 
Antwerp infutherance of his ambitious and unconstitutional design. 
And it in no degree mitigated the resentment which was borne him 
by the king; who, in the summer of 1580, published what was called 
aBan against him, an edict of outlawry, which in express terms invited 
anyone who might be ' sufficiently generous of heart ' to murder him; 
promising such an assassin the enormous reward of 25,000 golden 
crowns ; pardon for any crimes, however heinous, of which he might 
ever have been guilt}^, and, if he were not already noble, a patent 
of nobility. Such inducements could not fail to bring forth can- 
didates; when one volunteer stipulated for even higher terms, 
Philip sealed an agreement to give him 80,000 ducats and the 
cross of Santiago, the chief order of knighthood in Spain. In fact, 
it was known that assassination was Philip's favourite crime ; and 
that he would think no recompence too great for one who would 
thus rid him of an antagonist whom open force was clearly unable 
to subdue. So plot after plot was laid to poison him, to blow him 
up with gunpowder, to stab him, to shoot him ; and at last in July 
1584: he was shot through the heart by a man named Balthasar 
Gerard, who, however, it must be said, was not more impelled by 
the desire of gain than by a fanatical zeal to destroy an en amy 
of the Roman Catholic religion : a deed which the Jesuits, the 
authors of all the foulest crimes that were committed in that age, 
assured him would entitle him to a place among the holiest 
martyrs of the Church. 

The prince thus foully murdered in the flower of his middle 
age (he was but fifty-one), was undoubtedly among the very 
ablest men of a period singularly prolific of civil and military 
ability. He was a brave and far from unskilful soldier, though, in 
this respect, it is unfortunate for his renown that he was matched 
against so eminent a commander as Alva, to whom he must be 
confessed to have proved unequal. But as a statesman, he yields 
to no man of his time. It was his intrepid resolution that first 



126 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 158i. 

animated the people of the United Provinces to resistance to a 
tyrant who trampled on their constitutional liberties and rights, 
and who sought to crush their religion hy the most pitiless perse- 
cution ; and it was his sleepless vigilance and profound wisdom 
that conducted the resistance ;vhich he had organised so far on its 
road that before he died its ultimate success may be said to have 
been assured. Nor has anyone who has been endowed with 
equal talents ever exercised them, with a more fixed view to the 
welfare of his country, and a more entire disregard of personal 
objects. His love of civil freedom was sincere and pure; his con- 
stant advocacy of the right of all men to religious freedom, and 
consequently of the duty of toleration, though, perhaps, flowing 
in some degree from his habit of regarding the differences be- 
tween the rival sects as a politician rather than as a theologian, 
is nevertheless highly honorable to him as a proof of wisdom 
and humanity far in advance of his time, and of his courage in 
bearing misconstruction in the discharge of duty ; since in that 
day it was almost admitted as a maxim that a reluctance to force 
on others the adoption of one's unbelief by the severest methods 
could proceed from no feeling but that of indifference to the 
truth. If there be any point on which his political judgment may 
be fairly called in question it is, as has been already intimated, his 
refusal to take upon himself the supreme authority over the 
commonwealth which he had created, and his preferring to trust 
its destinies to the wretched Anjou. But the purity of the 
motives which dictated that refusal no one can doubt. And, if 
Washington has always been held in honour for the moderation 
with which he put away every temptation to erect for himself a 
permanent authority on the ruins of the British dominion in 
America, equal praise cannot be denied to him who refused a 
sovereignty which the whole body of his countrymen more than 
once pressed upon his acceptance. 

Great as was the grief felt throughout the Provinces for his loss, 
it may be questioned whether Philip's crime (for he was the real 
assassin, and not the miserable wretch who fired the pistol), was 
not profitless or even injurious to himself. For all that a statesman 
could do William had done so completely that little more remained 
to be done for some time. But the commonwealth had greater 
need than ever of a skilful commander, for Parma was a far greater 
general than Alva ; and in the science of war the young prince, 
who soon succeeded to the lead of the commonwealth armies, was 
at least equally superior to his father. 

It was, considering the critical nature of the time, a curious 
homage to the hero whom they had lost, when the States-General 
placed his second son, Maurice, a boy of seventeen, at the head of 



X.J. 1584.J MAUEICE OF OEANGE. 127 

tbe State Council which was to carry on the government. His 
eldest son, now nearly thirty years of age, at the beginning of the 
troubles, had been carried oft' by the Spnniards from Louvain, 
v/here his father had incautiously left him at school, and had been 
transferred to Madrid, where he had been educated as a Roman 
Catliolic, in utter ignorance of and indifference to the liberties 
of the Netherlanders. But Maurice, his half-brother, the only son 
of William's second wife, Anne of Saxony, had been trained under 
his father's eye with a natural solicitude ; and those who met to 
consider how that father's place could best be filled, well knew 
how great was the opinion which he had entertained of the boy's 
capacity. He gave a proof of the sobriety of his judgment and of 
his courage at the very outset, when, far from being dazzled by 
the dignified position thus offered him, he required three days to 
deliberate on the propriety of accepting it ,• and when, after that 
interval of patient consideration, full of peril as his father's fiite 
had proved such a position to be, he frankl}' undertook it. 

At the same time, still adhering to William's policy of securing 
for the commonwealth a foreign protector, the Council opened a 
negotiation with Henry IH. of France. The Duke of Anjou had 
died shortly before the murder of the prince ; and now it was 
resolved to propose to the king himself to succeed him, binding 
him equally to allow to all the free exercise of their religion, and 
to maintain all the civil rights and privileges of each state and 
city. Maurice, young and new to office as he was, did not scruple 
to resist the proposal with great vigour. He was more under the 
influence of personal ambition than his father ; and, knowing that 
the sovereignty of the commonwealth had been offered to him, he 
had probably already formed a hope that hereafter it might be 
tendered to himself also, and he was therefore far from inclined 
to favour any scheme which might prevent such a consummation. 
He was overruled ; but, though a formal embassy was sent to 
Paris to make the offer, it obtained no satisfiictory answer. 
Henry, indeed, coveted one or two of the Flemish seaports, and 
would have been especially glad to obtain the island of Walcheren ; 
but he had other objects, in which he took a much deeper interest. 
He was afraid of Philip's intriguing with the party of the League, 
and he was chiefly led to entertain and protract the discussion 
with the ambassadors of the States by the hope that the Spaniard, 
in order to prevent his concluding any agi-eement with them, 
would himself make an alliance with him on more favorable 
terms than, if this fear were removed, he would be inclined to 
admit. He did not suspect that at that very moment Philip was 
negotiating a treaty with the Guises, still less that he was en- 
deavouring to prevail on the King of Navarre also, though a heretic, 



128 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1584. 

to take arms against him ; and, less than either, that he still 
cherished a secret hope of inducing the League to accept himself 
as King of France, instead of the Cardinal Bourbon, -whose claims, 
when anything should render the throne vacant, the treaty of 
Joinyille bound him to advance and to maintain. Finally, Henry 
III. not only refused the ofters made to him, but exerted himself, 
with Henry of Navarre (over whom, as his cousin and heir, he 
had an influence which his character would not have given him), 
to prevent him also from aiding the States, which were thus 
eventually driven to reopen negotiations with England, and to 
purchase her aid by conditions which, after his death, threatened 
great danger to the commonwealth. 

Parma, who had for some months been preparing for active 
operations, but whose force, consisting as it did of little more than 
18,000 men, was very inadequate to the work which he desired to 
do, was so much encouraged by William's death, that he at once 
took the field, hoping, however, to save his men by such liberality 
of promise to the different cities which he intended to reduce as 
might induce them to avoid a siege by voluntary surrender. He 
was not altogether disappointed. Dendermonde soon yielded ; so 
did Ghent. After a few months he became master of Mechlin 
and Brussels; and the onlj' places of great importance on that 
side of the Netherlands which remained in the possession of the 
commonwealth were Ostend, Sluys, and Antwerp. The last 
appeared to him to be the most important, and at the same time 
the least impregnable, though the energy with which the muni- 
cipal authorities had latterly applied themselves to strengthen its 
defences forbad him to entertain the least hope that they would 
follow the example of the other cities, and submit without the 
most irresistible necessity. The destruction, indeed, of that vast 
commercial wealth, and still more of that security which is the 
foundation of such wealth, which d'Avila had inflicted, no policy 
could repair; but the citizens had done much to efface the visible 
injuries which he had wrought : they had rebuilt and strengthened 
the fortifications, had replaced and augmented the artillery, had 
widened and deepened the fosse, and, as far as those defences 
could ensure safety, had rendered it safe from any ordinaiy 
attempts. Had they taken the advice of William the Silent, they 
would have made it absolutely unassailable ; for he, who, as has 
been mentioned, was master of all the king's secret views, was 
not without information as to many of the designs of his servants. 
As early as the beginning of 1584 he had become aware that 
Parma was planning an attack on Antwerp, and had commu- 
nicated his knowledge to his great friend, the Lord of Sainte 
Aldegonde, who held the office of burgomaster or chief magistrate. 



A.D. 1584.] THE SIEGE CF ANTAVEEP. 129 

So correct was his intelligence, that he was aware even of the 
means which the duke intended to employ for the reduction of the 
city months before he made the slightest demonstration against it. 
Antwerp lies not far from the mouth of the Scheldt; its safety 
depended on its keeping open its communication with the sea ; 
Parma's hope of subduing it lay in his cutting off that commu- 
nication ; and he had already conceived the audacious notion of 
effecting that object by throwing a bridge across the great river, 
though it was nearly half a mile broad and sixty feet in depth. 
It was a. marvellous conception : but the possibility of accomplish- 
ing it did not depend upon him, but upon the citizens ; for, like 
most of the cities on or near the coast, Antwerp was surrounded 
by an expanse of low land which had been reclaimed from the sea, 
and which the sea was only kept from overrunning by a system 
of dykes and sluices ; and the temporary perforation of two of 
these dykes, known as the Blawgaren and the Kowenstyn dykes, 
would for the time bring the sea so close to its walls on the side 
which they sheltered, that there would be no hindrance nor limit 
to the continual introduction of reinforcements and supplies of all 
sorts ; and the city might then bid defiance to any enemy whose 
means of attack were limited to a land force. William, therefore, 
recommended the instant opening of a passage through the two 
dykes ; but, though the wisdom of thus taking timely precautions 
was undeniable, the advice was not acted upon. St. Aldegonde, 
though a man of great brilliancy of talent, it might almost be 
said of genius, was not a man on whom a city could depend for 
its energetic defence in time of peril. He had many virtues : he 
was an amiable man, an honest man, a fearless man. lie had 
many accomplishments : he was an elegant scholar, a linguist, an 
orator and a poet, learned both in law and theology, and had 
shown considerable skill as a diplomatist ; but he wanted decision 
and firmness : so that, instead of influencing those of less know- 
ledge and judgment than himself, he was apt to yield to them, 
and to submit his own superior capacity to their prejudices or 
obstinacy. And so it happened on this occasion. The city council, 
when he laid William's suggestions before it, at once discovered 
their value, passed an order to open the dykes, and entrusted him 
with the task of seeing that their order was executed. It might 
have been thought that nothing more was needed. And nothing 
more would have been needed had St. Aldegonde been capable of 
doing his duty resolutely. But, instead of at once carrying out the 
vote of the council, he listened to every kind of objection. The 
butchers of the city grumbled : the lands that the piercing of the 
dykes would submerge were valuable as pasture ; they were esti- 
mated as affording food for 12,000 oxen, and to deprive them of 



130 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1584. 

such grazing ground would raise the price, and diminisli tlie 
supply of meat. Others pronounced the measure unnecessary, 
because the scheme of bridging the Scheldt, on which the argument 
in favour of it was founded, was in their judgment impracticable. 
For both reasons the municipal guard was alleged to be wholly 
opposed to it, and inclined to resist its execution by force ; and to 
this combined opposition St. Aldegonde gave way, sharing himself, 
it is believed, in the opinion that the construction of the bridge 
was beyond Parma's resources. Meanwhile Orange was murdered ; 
there was no one left to watch the Spanish commander's move- 
ments with adequate vigilance, and that most energetic chief went 
on with his preparations unchecked and indeed unnoticed. 

I have said that generally speaking one siege is too like another 
to make it worth while to enter into the details of such operations j 
but that of Antwerp forms an exception to this rule, in the 
extraordinary character of the difficulties to be surmounted, and of 
the expedients by which they were overcome ; so that, as the most 
striking achievement of the greatest general of the age, it seems to 
claim a special record, while some of , the exploits of the defenders 
of the city are almost equally deserving of commemoration. In 
spite of the neglect of Orange's timely warning, a happy com- 
bination of ingenuity and boldness had more than once retrieved 
their early blunders, and had brought victory and safety within 
their reach, when the supineness of some leaders and the over- 
confidence of others threw away the advantages which had been 
gained. And few lessons are more permanently instructive than 
those which teach by example how a single oversight may ruin 
the best laid designs, and defeat them at the very moment of 
their accomplishment. 

The means at Parma's disposal would, to any other general, 
have seemed totally inadequate to the undertaking, for his entire 
force did not amount to 12,000 men ; and even after the Spanisli 
' Fury ' the population of the city was estimated at at least 
eight times that number. But he trusted to turn its very streno-th 
and populousness against it ; and, as they forbad the hope of re- 
ducing it by force of arms in actual conflict, to starve it into 
surrender by cutting off its supplies. "With this view, as early as 
June 1584, before the murder of Orange, he had begun to build 
forts higher up the river,, and to attack some of those in the pos- 
session of the commonwealth which mig^ht be regarded as out- 
posts of the great city, capturing Liefkenshoek, a post of some 
importance, from its situation, which was only nine miles from 
Antwerp, on the very day on which Gerard accomplished his deed 
of blood at Delft. Presently he occupied an island called Kalloo, 
half-way between Liefkenshoek and the city, and constructed on 



A.D. 1585.3 PARMA BRIDGES THE SCHELDT. 131 

it vast magazines and woikshops, which he filled with artisans of 
all kinds from every town under his authority. At last, towards 
the end of the autumn, he began to build his bridge. Close to 
Kalloo he had formed a sandbank in the bed of the river, which 
somewhat diminished its depth, though even there the width was 
800 yards. On each side of the stream at that point he erected a 
strong fort, one of which he named Philip, in honour of the king-; 
the other he called St. Mary, whom he had adopted as the espe- 
cial patroness of his enterprise j and between them he began to 
sink huge piles, strong enough to bear a solid roadway twelve feet 
in breadth, with towers and blockhouses to protect the work. Then, 
at last, the citizens began to see the necessity of the precautions 
which the prince whoiu they had lost had recommended eight 
months before. They now all consented to piercing the great 
dykes ; but it was too late; Parma had seen their importance, as 
well as Oiange, had seized and fortified them, and it was neces- 
sary to wrest them from his iron grasp before a gap could be made 
in either. 

Other schemes were more tempting, as being easier than such a 
feat. The town of Boisleduc, at no great distance, was one of 
the chief sources from which he drew his supplies, and Count 
Hohenlo, an officer well known for his adventurous spirit, though, 
unluckily, equally notorious for his dissolute lawless character, 
undertook to surprise it. The first part of the enterprise he 
accomplished with skill and good fortune ; a party of soldiers 
placed, during a dark winter's night, in ambush near the gate, 
surprised and mastered the guards at daybreak, and Hohenlo him- 
self, taking prompt advantage of their success, poured into the 
town at the head of his advanced guard of 700 men, 3,500 more 
following at no great distance. He had won his prize without 
losing a single man ; and, with a ferocity which was too character- 
istic of him, at once gave the men whom he had with him leave 
to plunder it before his other divisions came up. They dispersed 
through the different streets in search of booty, pillaging every 
house that looked tempting, and meeting with no resistance, for, 
strange to say, there was no garrison in the place, when the very 
disorder which their success bad engendered ruined them. A. 
handful of troops, not above seventy in all, had arrived in the 
town on the previous evening on their way from Breda. They 
now united themselves to some of the burghers, whom the Sieur 
Elmont, the governor of the city, had got together at the first 
alarm, attacked some of the plunderers, who were roving throuo-h 
the town in small bands, and who at once fled before them. Their 
panic communicated itself to their comrades. Hohenlo, instead of 
trying to rally his men, quitted the town, and hastened off to 



132 . MODEEJT HISTORY. [a.d. 1585. 

bring up the main body; but before he could reach the gates 
again, the citizens had let down the portcullis, and had taken his 
advanced guard in a trap. A few let themselves down from the 
walls and escaped, but the rest were overpowered and slain to a 
man ; and thus, through Hohenlo's rapacious licentiousness, an 
enterprise which might have covered him with glory redounded 
to his dishonour. And one hope of escape for Antwerp was cut 
oiF: Parma himself declared to Philip, when he reported the 
occurrence to hiui, that ' had the rebels succeeded, he must at once 
have raised the siege.' And he took good care not to leave so 
important a place any longer undefended. 

The second failure was even more disappointing. By the twenty- 
fifth of February the bridge was completed ; and the duke was so 
confident of its efficiency to secure its object, that, a spy having been 
seized within his lines, he showed him every part of the work, and 
sent him back to his fellow-citizens with a charge to report what 
he had seen, and to declare to them that the siege would never be 
abandoned, but that the bridge would either be his grave or his 
path into Antwerp. But there was in the city a Mantuan engi- 
neer of great ingenuity, named Giabibelli, who bore special ill- 
will to the Spaniards for some slights which he had received from 
them, and who was eager to requite them by proving to the duke 
that the bridge of which he boasted was not so invincible as he 
flattered himself. He laid his plans before the city council, pro- 
mising to destroy the bridge if they would place three large 
vessels of their fleet at his disposal. Fated throughout, as it 
would seem, to place their confidence in those who did not deserve 
it, and to deny it to those who did, they were some time before 
they would listen to his proposal at all ; and, when they did, they 
gave hiui two small boats instead of the ships which he had 
asked for ; and yet with them he accomplished all that he had 
foretold. He converted each vessel into an infernal machine 
or explosion ship, on a scale such as had never before been con- 
ceived ; though, in the present century. Lord Cochrane, who seems 
to have taken the Italian's work for his model, constructed some 
of still greater magnitude and power.* Each contained 7,000 lbs. 
of powder of unusual strength, made by Gianibelli himself for the 
purpose, which was enclosed within stone walls of great thickness, 
to increase the resistance and consequent violence of the explo- 
s'on, while above the roof, which was of still greater solidity, were 
piled vast masses of stones, cannon balls, grenades, and every con- 
ceivable missile. The ingenious mechanist would not trust to one 
mode of firing them ; but one vessel, the Fortune, was provided 

' Lord Coclirane fully describes vessels' as he calls them. — Auto- 
the constnictioa of his 'explosive hiography of a Seaman, a. -uTii. 



A.D. 1585.] THE EXPLOSION SHIPS OF GIANIBELLI. 133 

with a slow matcli ; the other, the Hope, was to he discharged 
by a trigger moved by clockwork. When all was prepared, on the 
appointed night, the fifth of April, they were sent down the stream 
against the bridge, preceded by a squadron of small craft, fitted as 
fire-ships, with combustible materials of all kinds. Having been 
turned adrift without a single man on board to guide them, the 
fire-ships ran aground at different spots, and did no harmj though 
in one way they produced an effect for which they had not been 
designed, since at their first appearance Parma, not detecting their 
real character, but thinking them a fleet whose crews were to 
assault the bridge, at once caused the drums to beat to arms, and 
collected the bulk of hia army to repel the expected attack. The 
Fortune, too, failed to reach the bridge, and the slow match, not 
having been calculated with sufficient precision, produced a very 
trifling explosion. But the Hope was more fortunate. She struck 
the bridge itself at the most vulnerable point, where the central por- 
tion, which was floating, was joined to that which was solid. As 
a thin wreath of smoke was seen circling over the deck, a band of 
Spaniards leapt down on it to extinguish the flame ; some of the 
officers laughed loudly at the failure ; some were less easy in their 
minds ; and one, seizing Parma himself, who was close at hand 
gazing down on the vessel, but who, by some impulse, unusual 
indeed in one so calm and resolute, yielded to his subaltern's im- 
portunit}', dragged him from the spot. The next moment the 
PJope blew up, with an effect which even now surpasses every 
similar incident in the annals of war : two hundred feet of the 
bridge were swept away: a thousand Spanish soldiers, with 
many of their bravest officers, were blown to atoms. Parma him- 
self, as it was, had a narrow escape : he was struck down sense- 
less by a fragment, and his page, who was just behind him, was 
killed ; but though he speedily recovered, his bridge was irre- 
parably damaged ; and with it his whole hope of effecting the 
reduction of the city for which he had been toiling with such 
unwearied skill for so many months was extinguished, if only his 
enemies had had the resolution to avail themselves of their great 
success. But former misconduct had earned for the admiral the 
unenviable title of Runaway Jacob, though it had not convinced 
St. Aldegonde of the folly of again employing him. On this 
eventful night he had been charged with the task of launching 
the different engines of destruction on their cruise, and had been 
directed, as soon as the explosion should have taken place, to 
send his barge to the bridge to ascertain the result : if a breach 
had been effected, he was to send up a rocket, at the appearance of 
which a fleet, lying ready a mile or two lower down, and laden 
with provisions, was at once to make sail and re-victual the city. 



134 MODERN niSTOEY. [a.d. 1585. 

But he was so terrified by the explosion that, though he sent the 
barge Tip to make the investigation, he never waited for its 
return: her crew, catching the contagion of his cowardice, never 
ventured to approach the bridge ; but, after rowing about for a 
while, came back with the false statement that it had received no 
injury. It was not till three days afterwards that a soldier of 
Ilohenlo's swam up and learnt the truth, and by that time Parma 
had so nearly repaired the breach which had been made that 
St. Aldegonde gained nothing from his intelligence but the morti- 
fication of learning how great was the success which had been 
achieved, and how utterly it had been thrown away. 

The third failure must have been still more grievous to hira, 
since it was his own folly which was to blame for it. Though 
Parma had occupied and fortified the dykes which Orange would 
have had him pierce, the force which defended them was not so great 
as to render an attack upon them hopeless. Could they be mastered, 
the dykes might still be severed and Antwerp might still be saved. 
In this hope, a month after the attack on the bridge, St. Aldegonde 
organised an attack on the Kowenstyn Dyke, the conduct of 
which he entrusted to Hohenlo, who was burning to retrieve the 
credit he had lost at Boisleduc. As before, Hohenlo succeeded up to 
a certain point, only to fail afterwards ; though his ultimate defeat 
was on this occasion owing to no fault of his, but to the short- 
comings of those appointed to support him. But, as there was 
encouragement even in the partial success which he had attained, 
three weeks later St. Aldegonde made another attempt on a larger 
scale, of which he took the chief command himself. On the twenty- 
sixth of May a huge fleet of 200 sail, in two divisions, one under his 
own orders, the other under Hohenlo, each conveying a strong 
body of land forces, came down on the dyke from two different 
quarters, and, after a fierce combat with its defenders, three 
thousand soldiers of the commonwealth stood victorious on the 
summit. A body of sappers and miners whom they had brought 
with them at once began to pierce it ; and in an hour or two 
had efi^cted so clear a breach that one barge loaded with pro- 
visions for Antwerp passed through. Once more the victory was 
won, had those who had won it had but the sense to persevere in 
the brief labour still necessary to secure and to complete it. But 
the hour which should have been so employed was otherwise 
spent ; with childish exultation both the leaders, St. Aldegonde as 
well as Hohenlo, sprang into the vessel whose passage through 
the dyke was the proof and first-fruits of their success, eager for 
the petty triumph of bearing in person the happy news of its now 
assured safety to the city, which had been gradually learning to 
resign such hopes. They lit bonfires, they rang the bells, they 



A.D. 1585.] FIGHT ON THE DYKE. 135 

assembled the chief citizens at a rapidly-prepared banquet in the 
town hall ; and while, amid their toasts and cheers, they were 
discussing what should be the treatment of the still numerous 
Spanish force on the dyke, whose retreat was cut off, and who 
must by that time have surrendered, they learnt to their dismay 
that the victor}^ of which they had been counting the spoils had 
been wrested from their hands. 

They had been quick enough to take their success for granted ; 
but soldiers who had been trained under Parma were not the men 
to acquiesce in a defeat while a single chance remained of re- 
trieving it ; and never was more clearly shown than now the value 
of that spirit which one man of genius can infuse into all his 
followers. The maintenance of the dyke was so important, and 
his expectation that the citizens would once more attempt to master 
it was so confident, that he had entrusted its protection to some of 
his most approved officers. Two were countrj'men of his own, 
Capizucca and Piccolomini, commanders of his Italian Legion. 
Their chief was a veteran German, Count Mansfeld, who had 
passed a long life in camps ; and had learned the value of time in 
war. Parma was on the mainland, in his tent, some miles from 
the scene of action ; but, should they wait for him to join them and 
assume the direction, it was certain that the enemy would have 
time to complete the destruction of the dyke before he could 
arrive. Mansfeld resolved at once to attack the conquering 
battalions (he did not dream that their commanders had deserted 
them) ; and, if he could efifect nothing else, at least to occupy them 
so fully as to prevent their doing further injury to the dyke till 
the general-in-chief should come. They had less time to wait 
for him than they feared. He had been roused by the first guns 
which had been fired ; and, with an instinctive perception of what 
must be the object of attack, had at once hastened to the spot ; and, 
though impeded in his progress by a division of St. Aldegonde's fleet, 
he soon forced his way to the scene of action, where Dutch and 
Spaniards were fighting with a fury that had never been surpassed 
in the whole war, on the narrow causeway which formed the 
top of the contested dyke. The contest had become too unequal, 
ilis troops, well commanded by Mansfeld and his officers, were 
already proving more than a match for antagonists who had been 
left without any commanders at all. His arrival and assumption 
of the command was decisive. He turned some of his batteries on 
the fleet which had brought the assailants to the dyke ; and the 
sailors, dismayed by the unexpected cannonade, and fearing lest 
the tide, now rapidly ebbing, should leave them aground and help- 
less, fled in confusion, leaving their comrades on the dyke without 
escape, and wholly at Parma's mercy. They were soon over- 



136 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1585. 

powered,. and slain almost to a man; and with tlie defeat of this 
attempt, the resistance of the city ended. St. Aldegonde, though 
honest and personally brave, was morally weak and spiritless. 
The very fp»ct that his late enterprise had so nearly succeeded dis- 
heartened him more than if the failure had been more complete, 
lie was too thoroughly dispirited to take courage even from the 
intelligence which he received from England that Elizabeth had 
almost resolved to send aid to the city ; and, in less than a fortnight 
after his victory had been thus turned into defeat, he listened to 
an invitation from Parma to a conference on the state of affairs. 
Such a meeting could have no object but a discussion of the terms 
of surrender ; and though the burgomaster tried to delude himself 
with the pretence that its object was a general treaty of peace, 
such was not Parma's intention. The great duke, as we have 
said, was not a mere soldier, he was a statesman ; and to aid his 
statesmanship he brought that subtle and indescribable gift of 
influencing the minds of all those with whom he was brought into 
contact, which is one of the surest marks of a great man. St. 
Aldegonde was fascinated by his address, and easily won over to 
agree with him in the futility of further resistance. Though he had 
professed at first to imagine that he was going to treat with Parma 
on terms of equality, and though for a moment he did make such 
efforts as consist of plausible and well-expressed arguments to obtain 
favorable terms, he yielded them all one by one. Parma obtained 
a complete ascendency over him ; and at last, after two months of 
negotiation, he signed a capitulation, by which he obtained indeed 
permission for the garrison to march out with the honours of war, 
but procured no single concession to the citizens, save that of 
permission for all the Protestants to emigrate. He made no 
stipulation for religious freedom, none for the very faintest tolera- 
tion ; and placed the civil liberties and privileges of the city equally 
at Philip's mercy, by consenting to the re-establishment of a foreign 
garrison in the citadel. 

The gallant French veteran La Noue, who had been a prisoner 
of war, but who while the siege was proceeding was exchanged, 
and had visited Parma at Antwerp, and had seen the bridge, 
advised him when the city had fallen, as in his opinion fall it must, 
to hang up his sword at its gates, and let it be his last and crown- 
ing trophy. And there can be no doubt that the general belief 
was that the reduction of that great city and fortress must ter- 
minate the rebellion. From the first commencement of the siege 
the Spaniards had openly spoken of it as an enterprise that, in 
whichever way it ended, would be decisive of the war. 'If,' they 
would say to the citizens, ' we get Antwerp, you shall all go to 
mass with us ; if you save Antwerp, we will all go to conventicle 



A.D. lo87.] ELIZAi3ETH SENDS AID. 137 

witL you.' But tlaougli the means for sustaining the revolt were 
grievously crippled by the fall of the great city and fortress, the 
spirit -which had kindled it was as resolute and undaunted as ever. 
And some aniends were made to the Netherlanders even for so great 
a disaster by the effect which it had in deciding Elizabeth to send 
them succours from England. Negotiations had been going on be- 
tween England and the commonwealth for many months, but the 
Queen's habitual irresolution, and her equally innate parsimony, 
which she seems to have inherited from her grandfather, had pre- 
vented the conclusion of any treaty till too late to save Antwerp ; 
but, in July 1585, Barneveld, the pensionary or chief magistrate of 
Rotterdam, a man whose political capacity had gradually procured 
him the chief influence in the commonwealth, had crossed over 
to England himself in the hope of effecting a final arrangement; 
and though he was unable to prevail on Elizabeth to assume the 
sovereignty of the country to which he invited her, he did at last, 
Ijy consenting to place Flushing and Brill in her hands, as security 
for the payment of whatever expense she might incur, obtain from 
her the substantial assistance of an English division, amounting in 
infantry and cavalry to 6,000 men, besides those required to garri- 
son the two towns. 

To how great an extent, though Norris, and Sidney, and Vero 
were among the officers, the efficiency of her aid was imperilled 
and diminished by the appointment to the chief command of her 
infamous favorite Leicester, a man whose incapacity, civil as well 
as military, was almost equal to his wickedness, it rather belongs 
to the history of our own country to relate. His conduct 
throughout his stay in the Netherlands presents one unbroken 
tissue of intrigue, incompetency, and disaster. He desired a 
higher rank than that of the Queen's lieutenant, and the States 
were not unwilling to gratify him by making him governor- 
general of all the Provinces ; his acceptance of which awakened 
the jealousy and provoked the displeasure of his ever-suspicious 
mistress, who, although willing that her officer should possess the 
supreme authority, was by no means inclined to look with appro- 
bation on his assumption of the title. And he had hardly pacified 
her, when he began to show his want of political ability by quar- 
relling with all the leading statesmen of the land, even of those 
who were most favorable to him. As a soldier, to match him 
against Parma was absurd, but nothing but the very jxtremity ot 
mismanagement could have lost Deventer and Sluys. .'^nd as men 
began to question his possession of even so ordinary a virtue as per- 
sonal courage, and as Barneveld soon obtained distinct proof of his 
faithlessness and treachery, he presently denounced him as warmly 
as he had originally defended his appointment; and, thoroughly 



138 MODERN niSTORY. [a.d. 1592. 

dishonoured and despised, the proud earl returned to England in 
the summer of 1587. His treachery, which consisted in attempts 
to obtain possession of other fortresses belonging to the common- 
wealth, which might enable him to dictate in every transaction of 
peace and war, had indeed been practised in obedience to instruc- 
tions from his government at home ; but Elizabeth was contem- 
plating a still greater betrayal of the interests of her allies, and 
throughout 1587 was listening to proposals for a peace with Spain, 
artfully held before her by Parma as a bait to throw her off her 
guard while preparations were maturing for the great invasion of 
her kingdom, on which the entire efforts of Spain were now con- 
centrated. 

Parma's exertions to co-operate with the Armada, and his sub- 
sequent employment in France, where the position of Henry IV., 
whose legitimate claims to the throne after the assassination of 
Henry III., in August 1589, coupled with the energy with which 
he was enforcing them, threatened the defeat of Philip's designs 
in that kingdom, gave a respite to the Netherland warriors. The 
great duke himself received a wout^d which, at the end of 1592, 
proved mortal ; and his death for the first time turned the scale 
of military ability in favour of the Netherlands ; for his successor 
in the government was the Archduke Ernest, a younger brother of 
Matthias. When, after little more than two years of office, he died 
of pi-emature decay, his place, after a short interval, was filled by 
a fourth brother, Albert, who, though a cardinal and an archbishop, 
was to receive the Infanta Isabella as a wife, and the seventeen 
Provinces as her dowry. But neither of these princes were able 
men ; and while the reins of authority were dangling in their hands, 
Maurice was rapidly developing a capacity not unworthy of his 
father. As a statesman, he was perhaps hardly less shrewd, had 
his acuteness been combined with equal firmness and self-posses- 
sion ; for want of which he often allowed himself to be overruled, 
even in the conduct of warlike operations, by inferior men. As a 
soldier, he was unquestionably far superior to William. From his 
earliest youth he had studied scientifically the whole art of war, 
and especially that branch of it which relates to the attack and 
defence of fortified towns ; and he had applied himself also to the 
details of the organisation and equipment of the army, introducing 
many improvements: arming the cavalry with carbines; and 
establishing the engineers, with a corps of sappers and miners, as 
a distinct branch of the service. And while Parma was out- 
generalling Henry in Normandy, and Ernest lying on his sick bed 
at Brussels, he was giving pmctical proof of the value of his new 
tactics by the recovery of many important towns to the common- 
wealth. So clear was his superiority over his Spanish antagonists, 



A.D. 1598.] SUCCESSES OF PRINCE ItlAUHICE. 139 

that the archduke could see no means of subduing him hut by 
procuring his assassination ; but the plots formed with that object 
failed. Maurice lived ; and, by the steady progress which he made, 
gradually inspired his troops with such confidence, that at last he 
Tentured to measure them with the Spaniards in the open field. 
Throughout the whole war, as we have seen, the armies employed 
on either side were very small, and the foi'ce which he designed 
to attack did not much, if at all, exceed 5,000 men ; who, unde"^ 
General Varax, were occupying a central position at Turnhout, in 
Brabant, which enabled them to threaten most of the towns in 
that district. 

The result of the action surpassed his warmest expectations, 
though none was ever fought less as the commander intended. He 
had collected for the attack a force half as large again as that of 
the enemj^ ; but Varax, on hearing of his approach, retreated with 
such celerity, that when Maurice, who, with Count Hohenlo, 
pressed on in pursuit, at the head of his advanced guard, at last 
overtook them, he had scarcely 1,500 men with him, and Varax 
was within sight of a narrow pass between a river and a deep 
morass, which if he should once reach and enter would render 
farther pursuit impracticable. Maurice detached Hohenlo to 
wheel round behind some broken ground with some squadrons to 
cut him oft' from it. That officer, never deficient in energy, lost no 
time in executing his orders ; and he no sooner appeared between 
the Spaniards and the pass, than they, though the very choicest 
soldiers in the service, were seized with a sudden panic. Their 
cavalry halted in evident confusion. Hohenlo, to increase their 
disorder, sounded a charge and led on his men. They at once 
broke in every direction, trampling down their own infantry, who 
fled with equal precipitation. In less than an hour the whole 
Spanish army was irretrievably routed ; Varax and 2,000 men 
were slain, 600 prisoners were taken, while the conquerors did not 
lose a dozen men. The men lost to the Spaniards was not un- 
important, but the moral efi"ect of the victory was almost incalcu- 
lable, for there had hitherto been no instance of Spaniards having 
been successfully encountered by equal numbers, and now one of 
their bravest commanders had been disgracefully routed by a fai 
inferior force. The last year of Philip's life was clouded by the 
intelligence that his soldiers were no longer invincible. In the 
autumn of the next year, 1598, he died ; and his death certainly 
brightened the prospects of the commonwealth, as though the 
change of sovereign made no alteration in the Spanish policy, it 
rendered it very unlikely that it would continue to be followed up 
with that relentless perseverance which was the predominant 
feature in the character of Philip II. 



140 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1508. 

Philip III. was very different from his father. He might have 
been thought amiable, if his conduct through life had not seemed 
rather to proceed from vreakness and indolence than from active 
intention of any kind 5 the father had himself examined and 
regulated almost every separate detail of his vast empire ; the son 
left everything to a favorite, the Duke of Lerma, whose sole 
object was to amass an enormous fortune. Not that the difference 
between the two sovereigns was felt at the first moment. On the 
contrary, just at that moment a new Spanish commander, Mendoza, 
admiral of Aragon, was displaying considerable military talent, 
though sullying his achievements with a cruelty equal to that of 
Alva; while the financial difiiculties of the commonwealth, which, 
as was natural, increased as the war was protracted, caused such a 
rediiction in Maurice's army that for some months he was utterly 
unable to make head against him. And when at last those em- 
barrassments were surmounted, and he again found himself in 
command of a respectable force, his renewed strjngth led to 
quarrels between him and Barneveld, which were eventually pro- 
ductive of most pernicious consequences. The pensionary, though 
wholly ignorant of war, had unhappily the same fondness for inter- 
fering in military operations, that a century later influenced the 
Dutch deputies to mar the best laid plains of Marlborough, though 
his counsels were of a very different character from theirs. They, 
from over caution, prevented the great English general from strik- 
ing blows of which the success was certain : he, rash in his igno- 
rance, was constantly urging Maurice to undertakings which, to the 
prince's experienced judgment, seemed beyond his strength, though 
with that want of firmness which was the chief, if not the only 
defect in his character, he more than once allowed himself to be 
overruled. Barneveld insisted on his invading Flanders and be- 
sieging Nieuport, because from its harbour privateers issued out 
upon the merchantmen of Rotterdam and Amsterdam. Though 
the English general, Sir Francis Vere, than whom no man was 
less inclined to make or to see difiiculties, and his own cousin 
Ijouis William, of Nassau, a commander equally remarkable for 
skill and daring, coincided with Maurice in the impracticability of 
the enterprise, he gave way and undertook it, only to find his 
judgment so completely confirmed that, though he gained a 
brilliant victory in the field over the Spanish army which sought 
to hem him in, and which, when apparently on the point of accom- 
plishing their object, was seized with a sudden panic, he was still 
unable to prevent the reinforcement of the gamson, and was com- 
pelled to retreat under circumstances which his late victory 
rendered only the more vexatious and mortifying. 

The attempt on Nieuport led to a retaliation, which is the most 



A.D. 1601.] THE SIEGE OF OSTEND. 141 

memorable occurrence in the later years of the war. The com- 
monwealth had retained one stronghold in Flanders, the port of 
Ostend. And as the Rotterdam merchants and Bameveld had 
dictated the march against Nieuport, so now the Flemish politi- 
cians urged the archduke to expel the rebels from Ostend, promis- 
ing a large contribution towards the expenses of the siege. He 
adopted the design, and accepted the offer; and, in July 1601, 
commenced what, with the exception of the investment of Gibral- 
tar in the last century, is the longest siege on record. Like most 
other towns in that country, Ostend, besides the solid fortifica- 
tions of bastions, ramparts, and counterscarps with which it was 
abundantly furnished, was further defended b}'^ deep ditches and 
canals, intereecting the whole of the surrounding lands, and easily 
flooded. And it was held by a garrison of nearly 10,000 men, from 
various countries, Dutchmen, Germans, Lutherans, French Hugue- 
nots, under Chatillon, a grandson of the old Admiral Coligny, and 
English volunteers ; the whole being under the command of the 
gallant Vere. The besieging army did not greatly exceed the 
strength of the garrison ; but they brought to the work a pro- 
digious train of artillery of the largest calibre that had ever yet 
been seen ; and an enthusiasm proportioned to the greatness of 
their task, an enthusiasm shared and skilfully encouraged by the 
Infanta herself, who would often visit the trenches and fire one of 
the heaviest guns with her own hands. Thus animated by her 
example, the artillerymen kept up a cannonade of unprecedented 
vigour. They boasted of having fired often 2,000, and never fewer 
than 1,000, shots a day during the whole siege. And while the 
guns were battering the walls above-ground, mines were piercing 
their foundations below ; and whenever the slightest breach was 
effected, the archduke would send storming parties to assault it, 
and a terrible conflict would ensue, which invariably terminated in 
the discomfiture and slaughter of the assailants ; sometimes when 
the attacking party had been more than usually formidable, the 
aid of the waters also being invoked, and the sluices opened to cut 
off its retreat, and overwhelm them in a fresh and still more un- 
avoidable destruction. The constant capture of prisoners, which 
was the result of these attacks, had one permanent and most bene- 
ficial effect in the way of humanising war. Hitherto it had been 
the practice to demand for each prisoner a ransom, which, if he 
were of high rank or fame, was often fixed at an enormous amount; 
and it was admitted that, if the sum demanded were not paid, the 
life of the captive was at the mercy of his captor. Only the year 
before this siege began, Maurice, having taken 500 prisoners, sent 
the archduke a message that if a specified random were not paid 
before a certain day, he would hang" every man. And the threat 



142 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1603. 

was not considered to be any departure from ordinary usage or any 
undue straining of the strict rights of a conqueror. But now the 
leaders on both sides began to find the advantage of exchanging 
prisoners ; and, though it was some time before the example thus 
set was universally followed, and sanguinary fanatics, like Cromwell 
at Drogheda and "Wexford, and Tilly at Magdeburg, still massacred 
those who fell into their hands, the advantages of mercy gradually 
recommended it to all, and, before the end of the century, the 
humane commerce became the universal practice. 

For more than two years the siege was protracted without any 
appearance of drawing to a termination. Vere had quitted the 
government to join Maurice in the field, but his place was filled 
by other officers of equal resolution. If the Archduke gained au 
advantage in one quarter, he lost one in another. And his opera- 
tions were crippled, as Parma's had been before, bj' want of money 
to pay his soldiers, some of whom even proceeded to open mutiny 
and to negotiations with Maurice ; when, in the summer of 1603, 
the siege, which had now lasted two years, suddenly assumed a 
new character by the appointment to the chief command of an 
Italian noble who had never seen a field of battle in his life. Some 
of his younger brothers had shown a warlike disposition ; and one, 
Frederic, had lately lost his life in a naval engagement with the 
Beggars of the Sea. But the eldest of the family, the Marquis 
Ambrose Spinola, had no military experience, and owed his ap- 
pointment solely to his vast riches. The archduke was at a stand- 
still for want of money ; when the marquis, who was not only very 
wealthy himself, but who had also great influence among the 
money-dealers of his native city of Genoa, undertook to provide 
the funds that might still be required, on condition of having the 
chief command of all the king's forces in the Netherlands entrusted 
to him. His terms were accepted. He hastened to Ostend. With 
the intuition of genius he at once discerned that the points of 
attack had been injudiciously selected, and many of the means 
which had been relied on had been ill devised, for, besides the 
straightforward work of battering with cannon and assaulting with 
forlorn hopes, vast sums of money had been expended on floating 
bridges and floating batteries, with which the archduke and his 
engineers had sought to close up the harbour, and thus prevent 
the introduction of supplies on which the town depended. 
But at once Spinola changed the line of attack, and directed 
his efforts against the western side of the town which hitherto 
h d scarcely been assailed ; and taking a full share of the per- 
sonal toil, and exposing himself as freely as the meanest of his 
soldiers, he infused such a new spirit into his followers, reducing 
outwork after outwork, and so gradually creeping closer to the 



A.D. 1604.] THE FALL OF OSTEND. 143 

■walls, that it became evident that his triumph, though it might be 
delayed, could not be permanently averted. 

In war, as in other things, it is as great an advantage to be able 
quickly te foresee the certainty of a disaster as the possibility of 
a success. By the spring of 1604 Maurice perceived that the fall 
of Ostend vras inevitable ; but a misfortune which could not be 
prevented might be counterbalanced, and with 18,000 men he 
moved against Slays, both as a fortress and a harbour far more im- 
portant than Ostend ; and, moreover, one, the possession of which 
by the Spaniards was in some degree a discredit to the common- 
wealth, since it belonged to Zeeland, and had always been loyal to 
its cause, till it was lost by the incompetency of Leicester seventeen 
years before. Spinola appreciated its value ; but though he more 
than once quitted his trenches, and, leaving but a small division to 
maintain his position before Qstend, marched with his main body 
against the prince, and fought one or two brisk actions in its 
defence, he was unable to save it. After a siege of three months, 
it surrendered in the middle of August ; and Maurice was ren- 
dered, by its acquisition, indifferent to the fate of Ostend, though 
again he so far deferred to Barne veld's entreaties as, contrary to 
his judgment, to make one more attempt to relieve it. The endea- 
vour failed, as he foresaw that it must, and at last on the twentieth 
of September the garrison capitulated ; Spinola doing himself 
honour as well as his enemies by the honourable terms which he 
granted them, consenting that they should march out with all the 
honours of war, and even entertaining the chief officers at a stately 
banquet in recognition of the gallantry of their defence. 

The fall of Ostend was the last incident of striking importance 
in the wai*. It was continued, indeed, for five years more, but with 
great languor on both sides. Spinola moved towards the north, 
showing as brilliant skill in the open field as he had displayed in 
the conduct of a siege ; but being unable to gain an advantage 
which should have a real influence on the final result, because 
Maurice, guiding his operations by statesmanlike rather than by 
purely military views, and seeing clearly that the resources of 
Spain were so nearly exhausted that for himself to avoid defeat, 
was to reap all the benefits of victorj^, more than once declined a 
battle even when the odds were greatly in his favour; and, post- 
poning his own renown to the permanent welfare of his country, 
steadily refused to run the slightest risk which might imperil 
what he now felt sure of obtaining without it. His caution was 
rewarded, and his anticipations were realised. Though deserted 
by England, whose new king (for Elizabeth had died in 1603) 
preferred the alliance of Spain, and by France, whom Henry IV., 
in spite of the promises of substantial aid which he had at first held 



144 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1606. 

out to liim, was tempted to a similar union with Philip, in hopes 
of obtaining possession of the whole seventeen Provinces for him- 
self as a dowry of the Infanta, who was to marry the Dauphin, 
the promised bride and bridegroom being, as yet, scarcely out of 
their cradles ; he was still able to baffle all Spinola's designs, 
though by 1606 the marquis had a well-appointed force of 24,000 
men at his disposal, to which he himself could oppose nothing 
equal ; and by the beginning of the next year the archduke him- 
self began to recognise the impossibility of any longer continuing 
the war, and to limit his hopes to withdrawing from it with 
credit. The negotiations did not proceed very rapidly ; it was 
impeded by the vicious constitution of the commonwealth, accord- 
ing to which the separate consent of each province, and even of 
many of the chief cities, was necessary ; and partly by the man- 
oeuvres of the archduke, who endeavom'ed to have the terms and 
ratification drawn in his name only, so that it should still be in 
the power of the king to repudiate it. But Barneveld and Maurice 
were too shrewd to fall into such a snare ; and the archduke's 
desire to come to terms was quickened by the intelligence that a 
fleet belonging to the commonwealth had sailed into the Bay of 
Gibraltar, and had attacked and destroyed a Spanish fleet, though 
composed of far larger vessels, and commandedby one of the most 
skilful sailors in the king's service, Don Juan d'Avila, a veteran, 
who, in his youth, had gained no small honour against the 
Turks at Lepanto. lieemskerk, the Dutch commander, had ex- 
horted his men to let ' that day begin a series of naval victories, 
which should make their countiy illustrious, and lay the founda- 
tion of an honourable peace by enabling the statesmen at home to 
dictate its terms.' His men were animated by his own spirit. 
They had learned, from the English defeat of the Armada that 
small ships well handled were so much more manageable than the 
huge Spanish galleons, that the disparity between them and the 
enemy they sought was not so great as it seemed. Their little 
vessels sailed round and round the unwieldy Spaniards, firing up 
at their lofty sides with deadly effect, while half the Spanish shots 
passed over them without injury ; pursuing these tactics, they 
burnt some, sank others, and finally captured or destroyed the 
whole Spanish fleet ; though their admiral Heemskerk, and more 
than one of his most gallant captains, fell in the hour of victory. 
It was evident that the Dutch were more formidable at sea than 
on land ; and by sea the Spaniards were conscious that they them- 
selves were far more vulnerable. 

Still even under this additional pressure, the negotiations pro- 
ceeded but slowly. And it was two years before peace was con- 
cluded ; which, even then, was nominalh' only an armistice for 



A.D. 1606.] PEACE. 145 

twelve years. Such an arrangement seemed to the archduke to 
save the pride of his sovereign, as it avoided the appearance of 
consenting to the perpetual independence of those whom every 
Spaniard still considered rebels. But Maurice and Barneveld cared 
little for appearances, as long as their liberty for which they had 
so long been fighting were practically secured. They felt no ap- 
prehension that, at the end of the period, Philip would renew war to 
refix on their necks a yoke which they had now proved their ability 
to throw off; and on the ninth of April 1609, the treaty was signed ; 
which, though its purport was somewhat shrouded in a long series 
of articles and clauses, did in fact acknowledge the absolute freedom 
of the Seven Provinces : their liberty to trade with all the Spanish 
settlements ; their authority to make regulations respecting re- 
ligion ; in other words, their right to entire and absolute self- 
government; and established the Dutch commonwealth as a sepa- 
rate and independent state. 

The war that was thus concluded was the most remarkable that 
the world had yet seen. It had lasted above forty years. It had 
been successfully waged by a nation which did not consist of more 
than a million and a half of people, and which could never raise a 
million of money in a year, against a potentate who could com- 
mand the services of at least ten times their numbers, and who had 
at his disposal the revenues of Spain, of the greater part of Italy, 
and all the treasures of the New World. Its efiFects, too, were not 
transitory, but so permanent that they remain in full force to the 
present day. So long a contest had strained the resources of both 
to the utmost. Holland had incurred a vast debt if measured by 
the extent of her country and income ; she had also lost many of 
her noblest sons, with a multitude of those citizens whose skill and 
industry had formed no trivial portion of the national wealth and 
resources. But the contest itself had not only stimulated her 
spirit, but developed and increased her strength. Before the next 
generation had passed away she had become a power in the 
European system, whose alliance was coveted by foreign statesmen, 
and was able to add no trifling weight to more than one con- 
federacy. And at the present day, under an improved constitu- 
tion, she combines a consideration abroad accorded to few but 
the most extensive monarchies, with an internal tranquillity and 
prosperity surpassed in no country but our own. 

To Spain the cost of the struggle had been far heavier. She 
was estimated to have spent 200 millions of ducats, and to have 
lost 300,000 men. Before the end of the conflict she was com- 
pletely exhausted ; and from this time forth she began to descend 
rapidly in the scale of nations, nor has she ever recovered the 
proud position which she had occupied before the contest com- 



146 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1606. 

menced. While Holland, before tlie end of a century, more tlian 
repaid the aid she had received from England, by sending forth a 
descendant of Maurice to assist the English themselves in the 
establishment of their own constitutional freedom, Spain had 
become so powerless and degraded, that almost at the £;.iie time 
foreign princes arranged the partition of her dominions without 
condescending to consult her ^wn sovereign on the subject. At 
the beginning of the present century, if she preseiTed or recovered 
any degree of independence, it was won for her by the efforts of 
others, not by her own. And, within the last few months, her 
degradation has been consummated, or, if that had been completed 
before, its recognition has at least been publicly proclaimed by 
her acceptance of a sovereign connected with her by no ties of 
blood, and whose chief recommendation to support as yet is, that 
he may be presumed to be ignorant of Spanish manners, and un- 
tainted with Spanish principles.^ 

* The authorities for the two pre- Republic and the United Nether- 
ceding chapters have been chieriy lands, Prescott's Philip II., Schiller's 
Motley's three worlis on the Dutch Revolt of the Netherlands. 



A.D. 1517.] THE HUGUENOTS. 147 



CHAPTER YIL 
A.D. 1517—1589. 

WE have seen with what ferocious and insane cruelty Charles 
and Philip endeavoured to crush the Reformation in their 
Flemish dominions. The persecution to which theFrenchlleformers 
were exposed was not less savage ; the destruction of the Vaudois, 
and of the victims of the St. Bartholomew massacre, even exceeding 
in horror any single atrocity committed in any other country. 
And if, through the vacillation of successive sovereigns, and the 
degree in which they subordinated their zeal for religious uni- 
formity to their political or personal views, the Reformers in France 
did occasionally enjoy a respite, and were even treated with 
apparent toleration, the indulgence thus momentarily shown to 
them was a cruel and ensnaring kindness, aggravating their 
eventual sufferings, and ensuring their more complete destruction. 
In a former chapter it has been said that Francis was as resolute 
as Charles to suppress the Reformation by force. Yet, in religion, 
as shown in adherence to the Pope, he was certainly no bigot. 
More than once he formed alliances with other potentates, even 
with the Infidel Sultan, with the express object of wresting from 
the Pope a portion of his dominions, and, in at least one instance, 
of expelling him from Rome itself. But, in considering the perse- 
cutions of the Protestants in France, the Huguenots,^ as they were 
called, and the long civil wars to which those persecutions gave rise, 
we must distinguish the feelings which actuated the sovereigns from 
those which excited their Catholic subjects. Neither Francis I., nor 
any of his successors, cared for anything beyond the maintenance 
of their osvn authority. As again, many of the most active of the 
Catholic nobles, such as the Duke of Guise, only made a handle of 

1 The name was derived from cer- (Davila, lib. I). Other derivations 

tain subterranean caves near Tours, have been given. Sismondi affirms 

called Ugone. Si chiamavano questi the name to have been formed from 

communemente Ugonoti, perche le the German Eidgenossen, oath-takers, 

prime radunanze elie si fecero di loro i.e. Confederates. But the authority 

nella citta di Tours, furo fatte in of a contemporary, such as Davila, 

certe cave sotten-anee vicine alia seems the best on which to rely, 
porta che si chiamava di Ugone 



148 MODEKN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1525. 

religion to cover their views of personal ambition ; and as, on the 
other hand, it can hardly be doubted that some of the Huguenot 
chiefs were influenced in their adhesion to the new religion by 
considerations of the importance which they derived from the 
position they thus acquired, as heads of a formidable party. 
But the bulk of the middle and lower classes were sincere : on 
the one si.de, in the fervour with which they embraced the new 
doctrines; on the other, in the zeal with which they sought to 
extirpate what they denounced as heresy : and, as the two parties 
were believed to be very nearly balanced in point of numbers, 
this comparative equality not only protracted the contest, but by 
protracting it, embittered the animosities which are at all times 
inseparable from one entered into for such a cause. 

Nothing at first gave indications that the Reformation would, 
in France, be productive of such events as presently flowed from 
it. Francis himself was too much occupied with foreign politics 
to pay any regard to theological disputes (of which he did not 
foresee the consequences) ; and the two ladies who had the 
greatest influence over him, his sister Marguerite de Valois ; ^ and his 
mistress, the Duchess d'Etampes, both regarded the Reformers with 
favour, a feeling to which he was probably inclined to defer, till 
shortly after his release from his captivity in Spain, a riot in Paris 
roused him from his indifference, and led him to identify re- 
sistence to Popery with a general lawlessness which threatened his 
own authority likewise. No part of the Romish worship wag so 
offensive to the Reformers as the adoration of images. As early 
as 1525 a woolcomber of Meaux, named Jean de Clerc, was burnt 
alive for breaking an image of the Virgin in that city ; and on 
Whit Sunday 1528, a fanatical mob in Paris tore another image, 
which stood at the corner of a street, from its pedestal ; and, after 
dragging it for some distance through the mud, battered it to 
pieces with every mark of derision and insult. Francis not un- 
naturally regarded such an outrage as a violation, not of the 
ecclesiastical, but of the civil law, with which his own sovereign 
dignity was inextricably bound up. His feelings towards all who 
could be supposed to agree with the imagebreakers underwent an 
instantaneous and entire revolution. Huguenotism, as it now 
seemed to him, led directly to acts of insurrection, if it was not 
insurrection itself; and from that unfortunate day intolerance 
became the principle of the French government; toleration was 
but an occasional and reluctant respite. To expiate the insult 
offered to the Virgin, a new statue was made of solid silver, which 
he himself, at the head of a magnificent procession of princes, 

She was the mother of Jeanne consequently grandmother of Henry 
d'Albret, queen of Navarre ; and IV. 



A.D. 1535.] PEESECUTION IN FEANCE. 149 

prelates, and lay nobles, solemnly replaced on the profaned and 
vacant pedestal. And, by his express order, prosecutions of the 
adherents of the new religion were instituted in every province 
in which they were found; he himself, forgetful of the proverb 
that a king's face should give grace, on one occasion attending at 
what was blasphemously called ' an Act of Faith,' * and feasting his 
eyes on the agony of those convicted of heresy, as they perished 
by lingering tortures in the flames. It was on this occasion that, 
seated on his royal throne, he made an oration to the people, in 
which he solemnly announced his resolution not to spare even his 
own children, if they should be unfaithful to the tenets of their 
ancestors, and, warming with his own denunciations, protested 
that, if one of his own hands were to become infected with heresy, 
he would cut off the offending member with the other. 

Yet, almost at the very moment that he was thus, as he 
flattered himself, giving a deathblow to those whom he had learned 
to regard as rebels alike against kingly as against ecclesiastical 
rule, a man was arising among his subjects who was to give the 
Reformers of France that of which they stood most in need, a 
distinct and defined system, a watchword and a name. As yet 
they were only partially followers of a German monk in his denial 
of error ; and between the German and the French mind there 
existed even then a clearly marked difference, if it may not be 
said a natural repugnance, which disposed each people to seek a 
leader from among themselves. The Germans had already theirs 
in Luther and Melancthon ; and such an one now offered himself 
to the French in Calvin, a native of Noyon on the Oise, who was 
gifted by nature with talents of the highest order, and who, 
though only twenty-six years of age, had already acquired a 
variety of learning which, even in that studious age, few of his con- 
temporaries equalled, and none surpassed. Plaving, almost before 
he an-ived at manhood, joined the opponents of Popery, he had 
•fled from Paris when the persecution became violent ; and, after a 
brief sojourn in different towns, which he successively found in- 
secure, he had quitted his country altogether, and had established 
himself at Basle, where he employed himself in framing a new 
theological and ecclesiastical discipline, and in drawing up an 
exposition of it, which in 153G he published under the title of 
' The Christian Institution,' and which he dedicated to Francis 
himself, since one of the principal objects at which it professed 
to aim was the demonstration that the doctrines of true religion, 
as they were understood and carried out by the Reformers, in- 
volved nothing dangerous to the Royal authority or the tranquillity 

I ' Auto-da-fg.' 



150 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.b. 1536. 

of tlie kingdom. It is a singular proof of the antagonism whicli 
from the first existed between the two great Reformers, even 
when apparently acting in harmony with the same object, that in 
the whole treatise he never once mentioned Luther's name ; ^ and 
in the principles which he advanced he went far beyond those 
which had been promulgated in the Confession of Augsburg ; 
rejecting much which Luther and Melancthon had admitted 
without scruple ; disowning the authority of general councils and 
the institution of bishops, and laying down a system of doctrine 
in many parts wholly new, and in some, especially in those which 
concei-ned the sacraments, as it seemed to the Lutherans, irreve- 
rent. Yet the philosophical complexion of his reasoning and the 
precision of his logic were so agreeable to the national intellect, 
that his conclusions were at once adopted by the whole body of 
the French Reformers. Calvinism became their creed ; and perhaps, 
in its inflexible stubbornness, it was better calculated to arm 
them for the struggle which awaited them than the system laid 
down by the German Reformers, who, though equally firm in 
their maintenance of every principle which involved important 
truth, were not disposed to make unnecessary enemies by un- 
yielding rigour on points which they looked upon as indifferent. 

Singularly enough Francis had no sooner pledged himself publicly 
to the extirpation of heresy than he embarked in a course of 
foreign policy, incompatible with the execution of his threats. He 
became eager to renew hostilities against the Emperor ; and in 
the winter of the very same year in which he uttered his frantic 
and cruel threats, he began to court the Protestant princes of 
Germany ; and, to propitiate them, released those of his own subjects 
whom he had thrown into prison, and even, as has been already 
mentioned,* invited Melancthon to France. But it is not worth 
while to dwell on the vacillations of this inconstant and worthless 
prince, persecuting men at one moment, caressing them at another; 
now putting himself under the absolute guidance of Popish 
counsellors, now inviting the Turk to aid in expelling the Pope 
himself from his capital. The only lesson which can be learned 
from the contemplation of such weakness is, that the greatest 
excess of cruelty is compatible with an utter absence of sincerity. 
And it must increase our contempt of Francis himself to see that 
his barbarity to his subjects had not even the miserable excuse of 
conscientious bigotry, which is pleaded for Philip ; but that to the 
doctrines for questioning which he doomed thousands of his people 
to slaughter he was himself so wholly indifferent that he was at 

1 It is ppcii said that Luther is not voluminous writings, 
mentioned in any part of Calvin's ^ See ante, c. iv. 



A.». 1545.] PEESECUTION OF THE VAUDOIS. 151 

all times -willing to subordinate every religious consideration to 

f tlie most passing caprice. 

/'/..Even in his enmity to Charles he had no fixed principle of 
impolicy. A brief and indecisive campaign was followed by an 
almost equallj' short peace. A fresh war, that made memorable 
by the battle of Cerisoles, was soon terminated by another treaty. 
At each restoration of peace he bound himself more strongly than 
before to enforce uniformity of religion throughout his own 
kingdom ; and the last treaty, the Peace of Crdpy, led immediately 
to the series of transactions which, of all others, have covered the 
name of Francis with the most indelible infamy. There was no 
district of France in which the new doctrines were espoused so 
eagerly as in the portion of Provence known as the Pays de Vaud ; 
indeed, the natives themselves denied the novelty of the doctrines, 
and maintained that they had never accepted the innovations of 
successive Popes, but had preserved the old Apostolic religion 
unmodified and undefiled. Such an assertion was even more 
offensive to the champions of Popery than the recantation of those 
doctrines by the German Reformers or by the Calvinists. And in 
1540 Francis had compelled the Provencal parliament to publish an 
edict of more than usual ferocity against the Vaudois Protestants ; 
by which not only death was denounced as the punishment of 
every man, slavery or banishment of every woman and child, who 
was guilty of heresy, but the desolation of the whole district was 
enjoined. Not only were the towns and villages to be burned, the 
detached houses to be razed, and the orchards to be cut dovra, 
but even the caves, which were numerous throughout the district, 
and which often afforded a refuge, and sometimes a place of 
worship, to those who fled from the rage of their persecutors, 
were to be explored and demolished. The fresh outbreak of war 
suspended the execution of this decree for a time. But the Peace 
of Crepy was emphatically a treaty of persecution. Charles easily 
persuaded Francis that lenity to those who disobeyed his authority 
in any matter, whether spiritual or temporal, was fraught with 
danger to the authority of every monai'ch in Christendom. 
Francis bound himself more solemnly than ever to enforce 
obedience with the most unsparing rigour ; and the Romish 
priests who, as he felt his strength decaying, began to obtain 
increased influence over him, persuaded him that in a strict per- 
formance of his undertaldng lay his sole hope of salvation. 
Accordingly, on New Year's Day 1545, he sent peremptory orders 
to the Count de Grignan, governor of Provence, to carry out the 
decree issued fiveyears before; and he and his lieutenant, the 
Baron d'0pp<5da, president of the parliament, executed his com- 
mands with a ruthless zeal which showed how cordially they 



152 MODEKN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1546, 

approved of them. Even the atrocities which 350 years before 
had, on a somewhat similar pretext, been perpetrated on the 
Albigeois were outdone now. M. de Grignan reported to his 
master that the Vaudois were not without means of resistance ; 
that they could assemble 15,000 men in arms. To prevent the 
assemblage of such a body, the utmost secresy was desirable ; to 
crush any resistance which, if once assembled, it might make, the 
aid of a military force was indispensable. And thus, to the 
relentless inhumanity of ecclesiastical persecutors was added the 
professional fury of a soldiery taught in that age to consider 
bloodshed, rppiue, and licentiousness as its legitimate occupation. 
Soon after the publication of the original edict, Francis, who, as 
has been mentioned, had again quarrelled with the Emperor, had 
offered pardon to all who should recant ; but now the object of 
those who were appointed to execute the edict was to prevent any 
from availing themselves of that offer by recantation. No warning 
was given ; and the unhappy Vaudois, who, though they saw a 
formidable force gradually collecting on their coast, believed it to 
be designed to take part in a naval expedition, had no suspicion 
of the storm which was about to break upon their heads ; when, 
at Easter, Oppeda, taking command of the troops, suddenly crossed 
the Durance, the river celebrated by Livy as the line of Hannibal's 
march, and at once commenced the work of devastation and 
massacre. The very next morning three large villages were set 
on fire, the soldiers in their fury hardly stopping to pillage them, 
and every human being was slaughtered. The next day the 
invaders pressed on (we may use terms of regular warfare, as the 
whole district was treated like an enemy's country, save that 
rarely indeed had an enemy's country been so mercilessly 
desolated), spreading themselves more widely, as they saw that 
no resistance was to be apprehended ; but continuing the same 
atrocities, or even worse, their rage seeming to grow more 
furious a s it fed itself with fresh victims. From some towns 
every citizen had fled before they reached them. From others 
they were seen to be still fleeing. The fu!?itives were pursued, 
were dragged back into their dwellings which were then set on 
fire, while the savage soldiers watched the doors to prevent their 
escape, and, if any, in the madness of their agony, tried to force 
their way out, drove them back with their spears into the flames. 
"We may forbear the recital of horroi'S worse than death to which 
many, and those the most defenceless portion of the wretched 
inhabitants, were exposed. In less than a fortnight, Oppeda 
could report to his employers that in twenty-two towns and 
villages not a house was left standing, that of the people 3,000 
were already slaughtered, that his soldiers were ceaselessly ex- 



k.n. 1547.] DEATH OF FEANCIS. 153 

ploring the woods for those who had escaped, and that so 
completely was the food of the whole district destroyed that 
undoubtedly those who might elude discovery must perish of 
cold and hunger. Francis, by a public edict, expressed his high 
approval of his officer's energy and success, and held him up as an 
example for the imitation of others. But it was nearly his last 
decree. As for the rest of his reign there was peace between 
France and all her former enemies, the persecution of heretics 
went on vigorously ; at Meaux, where the new doctrines had first 
been preached, so that ' a heretic of Meaux ' was for some years 
synonymous with Protestant, and at Paris itself, fires were con- 
tinually lighted for the execution of those who were convicted, 
many of those accused being tortured or mutilated before they 
were put to death. But neither these deaths nor the flatteries of 
the priests who urged them could prolong the life of their per- 
secutor. Incessant debaucheries had rendered Francis an old man 
before his time ; even had there not been, as there was, actual 
disease, the art of the physicians was powerless to give strength 
to an exhausted constitution ; and on the last day of March 1547 
he died. 

Though himself possessed of no learning or accomplishments, 
Francis had encouraged such pursuits in others, giving an asylum 
in France to foreign scholars whom the troubles of their own 
countries from time to time drove into exile, and by substan- 
tial rewards stimulating his own subjects to emulate their industry. 
And they repaid him by the most fulsome eulogies of talents and 
of virtues of which every part of his career proves him to have 
been wholly destitute. That he was possessed of great personal 
strength and activity, and that he excelled in the warlike exercises 
which were the education and pastime of that age ; nay, that he 
was endued with enterprising and undaunted courage may be ad- 
mitted, but these attributes are but the distinctions of any ordi- 
naiy noble or Imight, not the qualities of a great, much less of a 
good king. As a statesman, he adopted no measures from well- 
considered views of the interests of his people, or even from any 
anxietj' on the subject, but regulated his whole policy alike in 
declarations of war and in negotiations of peace by the merest 
caprice. As a general, he conducted his operations without judg- 
ment, showing no skill either as a strategist in a campaign, or as 
a tactician in battle. As a king, he showed himself equally devoid 
of good faith, of humanity, and of decency. One of his pre- 
decessors on the throne,' who resembled him in the misfortune of 
bis captivity, had set a noble example in preferring to return to 

> John II. 



154 MODEEN HISTOKY. [a.d. 1547. 

his prison rallier than violate his engagements, and in declaring 
that if .' truth were banished from all the rest of the world she 
ought ever to find a home in the bosom of princes.' But Francis 
made engagements with the deliberate intention of breaking them; 
showing himself as devoid of hnightly honour in extricating him- 
self from dilficnlties, as of wisdom and skill in involving himself 
in them. There is little need to enlarge on the want of humanity 
in a king who could order the slaughter of thousands of peaceful 
subjects, against whom the very officers appointed to examine into 
their habits could bring no charge but that of a renunciation of the 
Pope's authority in matters of religion. And he who for sucb a 
cause could command and approve such wholesale destruction, set 
his people at the same time a constant example of the most scanda- 
lous licentiousness such as had never before been witnessed on 
a throne. It was his conduct, shameless alike in falsehood, in 
profligacy and barbarity, vices not to be atoned for by picking up 
Leonardo da Vinci's paintbrush, or by inviting Erasmus to preside 
over a college which was never founded, his open derision of all 
restraint, of all decency, of everything that had ever been held 
honourable or respectable among men, that first sowed the seeds 
of that general demoralisation of the whole French people of which 
they are to this day reaping the bitter fruit. 

He had taught his evil lessons to apt scholars : for no period in 
the history of any nation is fraught with greater dishonour and 
misery than the reigns of his son and his three grandsons. Nor is 
there any in which the misery of the people flowed more directly 
from the iniquity of its rulers. Not, indeed, that Henry II. was 
either as profligate or as deliberately cruel as Francis ; but the 
history of his reign is not the only instance in which weakness and 
facility of temper have caused as great mischief as more deliberate 
wickedness. In many respects his character was not unlike that 
of our Charles II. He was graceful, accomplished, good-humoured, 
and affable ; by no means wanting in discernment, but his ruling 
passion was love of his own ease ; he could not take the trouble to 
govern, but submitted himself and the interests of his kingdom to 
the guidance of his mistress, the notorious Diana of Poitiers, 
duchess de Valentinois, and of one or two dissolute nobles who 
were his favorites, because they were hers. Diana, perhaps, be- 
cause the Duchess of d'Etampes, whom she mortally hated, had 
favoured the Protestants, regarded them with bitter animosity. 
The other favorites saw the policy of adopting her views ; and, in 
submission to their persevering influence, Henry published decrees 
of persecution as fierce as the worst which had been issued by 
Francis ; and would even have established the Inquisition in the 
kingdom, if the parliament, with a pertinacity which it rarely 



A.D. 1559.] THE REFORMING PARTY. 155 

exhibited for so praiseworthy an object, had not positively refused 
to repfister the edict. With characteristic indolence, he declined to 
exert himself to compel obedience to his authority ; and his life 
was not lonjj: enough to ^ive the patrons of that detestable tribimal 
an opportunity of renewing their instances. 

During his reign the history of the Reforming party in France 
had in some degree changed its character. Previously Catholics 
had been the undisputed masters of the situation ; the Protestants 
being allowed just so much toleration, or being exposed to such 
persecution, as their sovereign might permit or command. But 
they had gradually learned their strength ; and from the time of 
Henry's accession they began to resist persecution, to claim as a 
right the same freedom for the exercise of their religion which 
their German brethren had secured at Passau,' and to show a 
resolution, if remonstrance and entreaty should fail, to extort such 
concessions by force of arms. It is probable that they overrated 
their own numbers;^ being led perhaps to exaggerate them from 
their strength in the upper classes, which was more easily estimated 
than among the commons ; for the Reformation in France had 
this peculiarity, that it worked downwards, not upwards ; that its 
first adherents came not from the poor and uninfluenced ranks of 
society, but from the noble, the wealthy, and the powerful ; they 
indeed being those who had suffered most severely from the 
exactions and usurpations of the Catholic priesthood. The spirit 
or fashion of the Reformation penetrated even into the royal 
palace, for besides Marguerite de Valois, who was, to say the least, 
inclined to Hugueuotism, and the Bourbon princes, who openly 
professed it, the royal children themselves were allowed to use 
Huguenot prayers and to singMarot's psalms. It was not strange 
therefore that the Huguenots in France should feel themselves 
entitled to treat with their opponents on terms of equality ; while 
if they should be compelled to resort to force, they had leaders of 
reputation for both courage and military skill, whom they could 
confidently trust with the command of their armies. The Prince 
of Conde was a gallant and energetic captain ; the admii-al 
Coligny had gained a deservedly high reputation by the stoutness 
of his defence of St. Quentin, though after the defeat of the con- 



1 See ante, c. iv. at a fourth of the whole. D'Anquetil 

2 All estimates of the comparative {Esprit de la Ligiie, i. 46) says that 
numbers of the adherents of the old Coliguy persuaded Conde' to engage 
and of the new religion are merely in the conspiraej' of Amboise by 
conjectural, as we have not even any proving to him that there were '"more 
means of ascertaining the population than two millions of Reformers capa- 
of the whole nation. De I'Hopital is ble of bearing arms,' which is abso- 
Baid to have estimated the Huguenots lutely impossible. 



156 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1559. 

stable under its walls the permanent preservation of the place was 
impracticable. He was also, above all his contemporaries, a man 
of unimpeachable virtue and honour. And as, with the exception 
of the Duke of Guise, there was no Catholic leader who had not 
lost character in the recent campaigns against the Spaniards, the 
Huguenots were not without grounds for the confidence which 
they entertained in the issue of any contest to which they might 
be driven. 

Henry's comparatively early death, caused by an accidental 
wound in a tournament, was probaby favorable to his fame, as the 
shortness of the reign of his eldest son and successor Francis II. 
procured him also panegyrics to which a longer life might pro- 
bably have disentitled him. Francis, though but a boy, was already 
married to the beautiful Queen of Scotland, a niece, on the mother's 
side, of the Duke of Guise, whom the recovery of Calais had made 
the most popular man in France. He was also a man of great 
talents, great ambition, and few scruples, and was imconsciously 
aided in his projects by the influence of his niece, who regarded 
his person with affection and' his renown with natural pride. 
Francis, whose constitution was already undermined by a mortal 
disease, was as feeble in mind as in body ; and his more energetic 
wife easily persuaded him to trust everything to Guise, who 
speedily monopolised all the highest offices in the kingnom, and, 
there can be little doubt, began to plan the deposition of his 
nephew and his own elevation to the throne, as, in the earlier days 
of France Pepin had superseded Childeric. How merciless would 
have been his rule may be seen from the unpai'alleled ferocity with 
which he compelled his youthful sovereign to punish those 
engaged in what is known as the Conspiracy of Amboise,* endea- 
vouring even to make that design (which had certainly been 
formed with the intention of serving, and indeed of saving, the 
king himself) a pretext for the execution of one prince of the 
blood royal, and for the assassination of another, the King of 
Navarre, in his presence. 

' The Conspiracy of Amboise, so- tion Hundreds perished by the 

called because it was intended to have hands of the public executioners, and 

been carried into effect at that town, hundreds, bound hands and feet to- 

where Francis was residing, was getlier, were thrown into the Loire, 

entered into by the Huguenots, And thus, in the year 1560, were 

headed by the Prince de Conde, Avith exactly anticipated the Noyades of 

the object of delivering the j'oung the Kevolution, except, indeed, that 

king from the power of his uncles, a prince of the Church, the Cardinal 

It was betrayed to Guise, and he per- of Lorraine, took the place of the 

suaded the king to treat it as high butcher Carrier.' — Stephens on the 

treason. -'The punishments which Histor]/ of France, Lecture W. 
followed ar& too horrible for descrip- 



A.D. 1560.] DEATH OF FEANCIS II. 157 

But in less than a year and a half after his accession, on the fifth 
Df December 1560, Francis died, and was succeeded by his brother 
Charles, a boy of ten years of age j and these events for a while 
extinguished the power of the house of Guise, and transferred the 
chief authority to the queen- dowager, the widow of Henry II., 
whose influence had hitherto been overpowered, first by that of 
Diana of Poitiers, and afterwards by that of Mary, but who, from 
this time to the day of her death, a period of more than twenty- 
seven years, exercised the supreme power in the kingdom. 
Catharine de Medici, a niece of Pope Clement VII., who had 
negotiated her marriage with the French prince while both were 
still children, was stained by every kind of guilt that can make 
man or woman infamous. Yet her crimes proceeded from motives 
difi'ering from those which swayed the other wicked women who 
had influence, and none but wicked women had influence, in that 
age. She was not licentious and voluptuous, she was not rapacious, 
she was not even cruel in disposition, or in cases where she could 
obtain her ends without cruelty. But she was absolutely heart- 
less, conscienceless, faithless, shameless. Her one object was 
power : for that she had hitherto dissembled ; for that she now 
began to manoeuvre and intrigue ; for that she was prepared to 
betray and to murder friends, kinsmen, and enemies alike, even 
half a nation if they seemed to stand in her way or to endanger her 
icquisition or her maintenance of that dominion on Avhich all her 
desires were fixed. To the religious questions which agitated the 
nation she was profoundly indiflerent. Catholics and Huguenots 
were, alike in her eyes, only measured by the use which she could 
make of them ; and she showed favour to each party alternately, as 
she fancied each inclined to rely upon her aid and to assist her 
own designs. 

The nominal authority was soon acquired. Before Francis's 
death the States-General i had been convoked to meet at Orleans. 
They were formally opened by the new sovereign before the end of 
the year ; and from the day of their meeting Catharine, with the 



1 The States- General, estaWisIied were still confined to presenting re- 

by Philip IV. (Le Bel) in 1.301, were monstrances against grievances, and 

the representatives of the three es- to entreating redress : a petition 

tates : the Clergy, the Nobles, and with which they had no means of 

the Commons (Le Tiers Etat), and enforcing compliance ; so that, in 

so far to a certain extent resembled realitj^ they were powerless for good ; 

our British Parliament. But thev and, gradually ceasmg to be useful 

never extended their authority, as, by even as a screen, they were discon- 

a skilful use of the power of the purse, tmued at the begmning of the 17th 

our House of Commons gradually century, and were not convened 

enlarged theirs. Their privileges agam till the lU-fated year 1789. 



158 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1561. 

acquiescence of all parties, assumed the office of regent : while at 
tlie beginning of the next year Guise retired from the court ; and a 
less cautious or crafty person than Catharine might have supposed 
that all obstacles were removed from her path ; but suspicion was 
a part of her nature. She soon learnt that Guise had united him- 
self with the Constable Montmorenci and with the Marshal St. 
Andre, an union which showed a resolution on his part to force 
his way back to power. And she was, in consequence, driven to 
connect herself with the King of Navarre- and his brother the 
Prince of Conde. The King of Navarre was declared Lieutenant- 
General of the kingdom, an office which gave him the supreme 
command of the armj'^ ; and Catharine, feeling herself placed by 
this appointment of her new ally in a safe position, began to nego- 
tiate with both parties in the tone of a mistress. She even, with 
singular blindness, as if religion had been the first consideration 
in the minds of either Guise or Anthony of Navarre, formed a 
project of removing all grounds of future differences between them, 
by convening a synod of Catholic and Huguenot doctoriS, who 
might agree on a compromise and frame a creed which both sects 
could accept. It met at Poissy in 1561, and effected nothing, unless 
indeed it may be said to have encouraged the Huguenots to raise 
their pretensions, and to have exasperated the Catholics to check 
them by violence and outrage. 

The Huguenots, gaining confidence from having been admitted 
to defend their doctrines in the presence of the king (for Charles 
himself had sat as president of the conference), demanded and 
obtained a revocation of the edicts which had hitherto prohibited 
their public performance of worship, and took possession of many 
of the churches ; and the next year, Guise, elated at having 
detached the King of Navarre from their cause (for that prince 
had been won over, by the promise of the hand of the beauteous 
Queen of Scotland, to desert his religion and become a Catholic), 
resolved to teach them that no law should protect them in the 
exercise of a religion which he discountenanced, and which, still 
keeping in view his designs on the throne, he was resolved at a 
future day completely to suppress. He even entered into a league 
with Philip of Spain, who promised him the aid of a Spanish 
army if he should find himself unable to crush the Huguenots 
without foreign assistance ; but, being too impatient to wait for it, 
in the spring of 1562, as he was passing with a body of armed 
retainers through Passy, a small town in Champagne, he fell, 
sword in hand, on a congregation of Huguenots just assembling to 
hear a favorite preacher, slew or severely wounded between two 
and three hundred of them, and then, openly defying the authority 
of the queen, marched on Paris, made himself master of the city 



A.D. 1569.] CO]\DIENCEMENT OF THE CIVIL WAES. 159 

and of Fontainebleau, where the yoimg Idiig was residing, and 
prepared to overpower all resistance by open war ; for an outrage 
such as that of Passy had rendered war inevitable. Nor had it 
been the only injury of the kind to which the Huguenots had 
been exposed. In many districts the Roman Catholic bishops 
themselves had not thought it inconsistent with their sacred pro- 
fession to stir up the populace to deeds of bloodshed : other 
congregations had been massacred at Cahors, Toulouse, and 
Limoux ; and it had become evident that there was no protection 
for them, unless they could protect themselves. They took arms, 
with Conde for their leader ; and thus, in the summer of 1562, 
began that terrible series of wars,^ or rather war, which lasted till 
nearly the end of the century. It would be tedious and profitless 
to dwell on the details of a contest made doubly horrible by a 
succession of treacheries and atrocities alien from the spirit of 
honourable warfare. Of the original leaders on each side every one 
soon perished. Guise was assassinated before Orleans ; Conde, 
taken prisoner at Jarnac, was basely murdered in cold blood ; St, 
Andr4 fell in one battle, the King of Navarre in another, the Con- 
stable in a third ; while more than once Catharine, who probably 
was sincerely desirous of peace, since a decisive victory of either 
side would have been unfavorable to her views, procured a 
respite to the combatants by treaties which neither party intended 
to observe. During the early part of the war the Huguenots 
were manifestly inferior to their enemies, not only in numbers, 
but in the generalship of their commanders. Their ablest officer 
had been the Admiral Coligny, but his talents were more con- 
spicuous in avoiding the worst consequences of defeat than in 
gaining victories ; but, after the death of Conde, they obtained a 
leader who, though not possessed of any great military skill, was 
distinguished by a brilliant courage and energy that often pro- 
duces as beneficial effects as a strict adherence to rules, and is 
eminently serviceable in inspiring armies with confidence. Conde 
had fallen in March 1569, and in April the widowed Queen of 
Navarre brought her young son, afterwards Henry IV., to the 
head-quarters of the Huguenot army, and, though he was only 
sixteen, her virtues caused him to be unanimously adopted by the 
party as their leader. 

Yet triumphant as he eventually became, he had nearly been cut 
off before rendering any service to his party. During the three 
years which ensued Catharine was more active than ever in her 
intrigues. She was afraid of the chiefs on both sides ; most espe- 
cially did she fear the Duke of Guise, the brother and successor of 

' The French historians, counting from time to time interrupted, enume- 
thc treaties bj' which hostilities were rate eight wars. 



160 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 15G9. 

the defender of Metz, who, if inferior to that prince in military 
talent, was fully his equal in political sagacity and address ; and, 
while he inherited all his ambitious views, was even less subject 
to scruples on the score of good faith or humanity. She was 
apprehensive, too, of the influence of the Protestant chiefs, whom 
she suspected of regarding her with distrust, and of counselling 
the king, who by this time was of full age, to emancipate himself 
from the thraldom in which she held him, and to take the reins of 
government into his own hands. It is not improbable that her 
fears of both were well founded. The means which she adopted 
to extricate herself will never be forgotten while the world lasts. 
Whether she herself conceived the design, or whether, as Brantome 
affirms, it was suggested to her by the old Marshal Tavannes, with 
whose well-known ferocity of temper it is not inconsistent, or whe- 
ther, again, as some authors have with less probability fancied, the 
Duke of Alva had proposed it to her at a conference which she 
had held with him at Bayonne eight years before, and she had ever 
since been biding her time, waiting for an opportunity to carry it 
out with the greatest effect, must ever be uncertain. But, whether 
she had any prompter or not, or, if prompter there was, whoever 
he may have been, about her actions there is no dispute. She 
resolved to emancipate herself and the king from the difficulties 
in which they were placed through the rivalry and animosity of 
the two parties by the entire destruction of one ; and, as there was 
no doubt that the Huguenots were by far the less numerous, she 
selected them for her victims ; and set herself with greater dupli- 
city than ever to cajole their chiefs, and to draw them all together 
into the net which she had woven for them. The more effijctually 
to throw them off their guard, she offered her own daughter Mar- 
garet in marriage to the young King of Navarre, with a magnificent 
dowry, very acceptable to a prince whose dominions and revenues 
were as scanty as his ; and on the eighteenth of August 1572, the 
wedding was celebrated at Notre Dame. Five days afterwards 
Catharine presided at a council, where the principal question to be 
decided was whether Henry should be murdered the next morning; 
for at midnight on the twenty-third the great bell of the palace was 
to toll, and its deep sound was to be the knell of every Huguenot in 
Paris and in every province which the royal command for the in- 
tended massacre could reach in time. Guise was urgent for his de- 
struction, partly from his natural ferocity of temper, partly because 
he appreciated his abilities, and still more, if we may believe the 
chroniclers of the day, because he was in love with his young 
queen. But Catharine and Charles (even their callous hearts being 
accessible to some touch of mercy or of shame) pronoimced it too 
horrible to make their nearest relative a widow in the same week 



A.D. 1572] THE IMASSACEE OF ST. BAETnOLOMEW. 161 

in whicli she had become a bride ; and it was determined to spare 
him and his cousin, the young Prince of Conde, who had also been 
married but a few weeks before : but there was no mercy for any- 
one else. The fate of the Admiral Coligny Guise had endeavoured 
to anticipate by private assassination two days before, but the 
ruffian whom he employed had missed his aim, and had only 
wounded the brave old man in the hand and arm. However, his 
death was deferred by but a few hours. On the evening of the 
twenty-third the gates of the city were carefully shut ; bands of 
armed men were posted at every point where any attempt at either 
resistance or escape seemed possible ; other gangs were provided 
with weapons for slaughter ; while orders were hurriedly trans- 
mitted through the different quarters of the city that at the tolling 
of the bell every window should be lighted up, lest any destined 
victim should be screened by the darkness of the night. Before dawn 
on the twenty-fourth, St. Bartholomew's Day, the signal rang out, 
and the butchery began. The crippled admiral was among the very 
first to perish. The moment that the fatal peal was heard, Guise 
himself, at the head of 300 of his own retainers, rushed to his house, 
around which guards had been posted some hours before. Guise 
himself had just so much shame as to remain in the courtyard, 
and to entrust the perpetration of the deed of blood to his servants : 
they, headed by a Lorrainer in his especial confidence, named 
La Besme, forced their way into the bedchamber of the old man, 
Avho, having already heard the noise of pistol-shots and the cries 
of wounded men in the street, had at once divined the cause of the 
tumult, and had thrown himself on his knees to pour out his last 
prayer to his God. He met his death with calm, disdainful dignity. 
' Young man,' said he, ' you ought to respect these my gray hairs. 
But do your deed ; you will have shortened my life by but little.' 
While he was yet speaking the base assassin plunged his sword 
into his heart. Ooligny fell dead at his feet ; but the rancour of 
his enemies was not satisfied. They hacked his face with theii 
daggers ; they threw the corpse out of the window into the yard, 
that their master the duke might feast his eyes on the shameful 
spectacle ; some of his friends even insulted it with kicks : and 
then the head was cut off and carried to tiie Louvre, that the 
king himself might be assured of the death of the most virtuous 
of his subjects. Meanwhile, in every quarter, in every street, was 
heard the ill-omened shout, ' Kill ! kill !'; the pavement ran with 
blood ; and though here and there some Huguenot, better armed 
or more dauntless than his fellows, made stout resistance, all that 
he could efi"ect was to sell his life dearly ; he was overpowered by 
numbers, and perished as surely as those who made no struggle 
against their doom. Presently Charles himself was added to the 



162 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1572. 

number of the murderers. It had not heen without some difficulty 
that his consent to the massacre had been wrung from him. 
Though there was no touch of humanity in his disposition, his 
soul was too timid not to recoil from a deed of such active, resolute 
wickedness ; but, as the taste of blood inflames a tiger, so did the 
progress of the slaughter add ferocity to his cold nature. The 
sight of those who were falling beneath the poniards of the 
assassins, as he gazed on them out .of his palace windows, kindled 
in him a desire to become an actor in the bloodshed. He seized a 
gun and fired on those who fled ; lending his shrill scream, ' Kill ! 
kill !' the most unroyal words that ever proceeded from a monarch's 
mouth, to swell the shouts of the meaner butchers. And, half 
repenting of the mercy that had been shown to Henry of Navarre 
and Conde, caused them to be brought before him, and threatened 
them with the same fate if they did not at once renounce their 
religion. 

We may spare ourselves a minute recital of the horrors of this 
terrible week ; for so long was the massacre continued, till the 
Seine itself was discoloured with blood and blocked up with 
corpses. The number of those who perished could only be con- 
jectured ; but in Paris alone at least 10,000 ^ fell ; and that 
number is believed to have been tripled in the provinces ; though 
some governors, and even one or two bishops, had the courage to 
disobey the royal mandates : a boldness which some expiated by 
their own deaths. The answer of the "Viscount of Orthez, governor 
of Bayonne, has been deservedly preserved by most historians : 
' Sire,' said he, ' I have read the letter to the inhabitants of 
Bayonne, enjoining a massacre of the Huguenots. Your majesty 
has many faithful subjects in this city, but not one executioner.' 
But in spite of his and other noble instances of disobedience, 40,000 
Huguenots are believed to have perished. And Charles, when his 
fury had once been kindled, was so far from being satisfied with 
the slaughter which had been committed, that he brought one oi 
two nobles, who were discovered to have been only wounded, 
before the judicial tribunals, procured their condemnation, and, 
going himself to witness their execution, which took place after 
nightfall, caused torches to be held to their faces, that he might 
enjoy the fiendish pleasure of witnessing their dying agonies. 

The intelligence of so monstrous a crime filled all Christendom 
with horror. And even before the feeling with which it was 
regarded in other countries could be known in Paris, Charles 
spontaneously felt that it required some more than ordinary 

1 This is Davila's estimate of those few: 'Per la cittk il prirao ed il 
who perished in the first two days, sequente giorno ne furono uccisi piii 
He seems to think the number too di dieci mila.' 



A.B. 1573.] THE POPE APPEOVES THE MASSACEE. 163 

excuse ; but, bewildered by bis own infamy, he could not adhere 
to any one pretext. At first, he declared that he had had no 
previous knowledge of the massacre, but that Guise alone had 
contrived it ; then he avowed that it had been perpetrated by his 
orders, because a plot had been discovered to assassinate himself 
and all the royal family, and to place Coligny on the throne : a 
charge which, as no attempt was ever made to support it by proof, 
the Huguenots themselves did not condescend to refute. The only 
person in Europe who showed himself insensible to the infamy of 
the deed was the Pope ; who was eager, on the contrary, to claim 
a share of it for himself and his religion. At the head of the 
College of Cardinals, he went in procession to St. Mark's to offer 
up thanks to God for the singular favour which, in permitting the 
massacre, he had shown to the Holy See and to all Cliristendom. 
He decreed a jubilee ; fired a salute from St. Angelo, as if to 
celebrate a victory ; ordered a general illumination of every street 
in Rome, and sent a legate extraordinary to Paris to thank Charles 
for his heroic exploit, and to exhort him not to delay reaping the 
fruits of his triumph over the heretics, but at once to publish 
throughout France the decrees and canons of the Council of Trent. 
But whatever ipay have been the Pope's opinion of the massacre, 
it did not bring Charles either security or peace. He did not live 
more than a year and three quarters after it, and no king ever 
passed a more miserable time. He could not banigh the scene 
from his mind ; he could not sleep ; he could not even suppress 
his remorse, but was continually uttering reproaches against his 
mother for having advised, and against himself for having con- 
sented to, the horrid deed. He even began to fear that Catharine 
had designs upon his own life. He was well aware that his next 
brother Henry, duke of Anjou, had always been her favorite son; 
the position which he had held as commander-in-chief at Mon- 
contour supplied her with a pretext for extolling his gallantry and 
military skill above his own ; and, when in the summer of 1573, 
the duke was elected King of Poland, Charles could not suppress 
a suspicion, which, indeed, was shared by others, though probably 
without sufficient grounds, that she contemplated poisoning him- 
self to prevent her separation from her favorite, who, as there was 
no Dauphin, was still the next heir to the crown. Nor were his 
domestic disquietudes confined to fears of his mother and his 
brother Henry. His third brother Francis, duke of AlenQon, was 
almost equally dreaded by him : for the massacre had rather 
exasperated than daunted those Huguenots who had escaped. 
They at first threw themselves into Eochelle and other towns in 
the eastern provinces, and showed a resolution to defend them 
against the royal forces ; while, as Anjou took the command of 



164 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1574 

tlie army wMcIi was sent against Rochelle, Alen9on, who hated 
him, entered into negotiations with the Huguenot captains, offer- 
ing to make common cause with them against both his brothers. 
Finally, Charles was forced to make terms with the Rochellois, 
and, instead of seeing them at his mercy, to admit them to a 
treaty, which left them and all the Huguenots of the district 
liberty to retain their form of worship under certain restrictions. 
Encouraged by this success, they rapidly recruited their numbers, 
I'enewed their organisation, and rose in their demands ; till it became 
clear that either it would be necessary to concede them, or that 
civil war would again break out, in which Charles would have no 
general but Guise in whom he could confide, while he had good 
reason to believe that to place that noble at the head of an army 
would be far less dangerous to the Huguenots than to himself. 
His constant agitation undermined his health, which had never 
been strong. At the beginning of 1574 he was attacked by a slow 
fever, which defied the skill of his physicians, and, as it did so, 
was attributed by many to poison.^ As he drew near to his end, 
his agonies of conscience increased, the shrieks of his victims on 
St. Bartholomew's Day seemed ever to resound in his ears ; his 
own broken exclamations, speaking only of bloodshed and murder, 
horrified the bystanders ; and on the thirtieth of May, worn out by 
bodily and mental suffering, he died, a month before his twenty- 
fourth birthday. 

The reign of his brother, who instantly abdicated his foreign 
throne, and returned to France to take possession of his inheritance, 
might be passed over without notice, if regard were had only to 
his own character and conduct ; for the former was stained with 
the blackest vices, and his actions, whenever he could be roused 
to sufficient energy to act at all, were crimes. Every party in the 
State soon learnt to look upon such a sovereign with contempt; 
yet the conduct of the leaders of each was not much more deserving 
of respect than that of Henry himself. The chiefs of the Huguenots 
were again the King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde, who, 
having, after the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, been for some time 
carefully watched in a sort of honourable custody, had at length 
recovered their liberty, and renewed their profession of Protes- 
tantism, which they had been compelled to renounce ; and, under 
their guidance, the Huguenots again had recourse to arms to protect 

1 That accusations of poison should is somewhat remarkable, though, that 

have been as general as they were in Louis XI II. attributed Charles's death 

those days is a melancholy indication to poison, and did not scruple to ex- 

of the character of the times, though press his belief to Marshal Bassom- 

the commonness of the charge neces- pierre. — Memoires de Bassompierre, 

sarily creates a distrust of the grounds p. 154. 
for it in each particular instance. It 



&.D. 1588.] THE BATTLE OF COUTEAS. 165 

themselves against a renewal of persecution. While Guise, pro- 
fessing discontent at a treaty which the king, or rather Catharine 
(for, in fact, she was as fully the ruler in this as she had been in 
the last reign), had concluded with them, revived the League,' 
nominally with the object of maintaining the old religion, but 
really and notoriously with the design of deposing Henry III, 
and of placing himself on the throne to which he pretended an 
hereditary right as the representative of the race of Charlemagne. 
Yet when he had taken this step, and was aware that his objects 
were known to the court, none of his military operations were 
either conceived with ability or executed with the energy which 
treason imperatively requires ; while the King of Navarre, who 
did indeed gain a brilliant victory at Coutras in 1587, rather 
damaged than enhanced his reputation by failing to derive the 
slightest advantage from his triumph. 

By this time anarchy prevailed in every part of France, and 
most in Paris, where the citizens espoused the cause of the League, 
till the king was forced to seek safety, first in flight, then in pro- 
curing the assassination of Guise, and finally in uniting himself 
to the King of Navarre, whom the recent death of the Duke of 
Alen§on had left heir to the throne, and who consequently was 
as deeply interested as himself in subduing the rebellious spirit of 
the capital. 

But the death of Guise had not extinguished his family, nor 
relieved Henry from the danger to which he had been exposed 
from his pretensions. His family claims and his military com- 
mand devolved on his brother, the Duke of Mayenne, who was 
perhaps his equal in ambition and military talent, though more 
voluptuous habits and a singularly unwieldly person rendered 
him incapable of the same activity. Mayenne at once threw 
himself into the city ; and the two Henries advanced to besiege it 
at the head of an army so powerful that no garrison which the 
citizens could provide could hope long to resist it. But in those 
days fair fighting was not the only nor the favorite mode of 
extricating oneself from danger. Mayenne had a sister, the 
Duchess of Montpensier, as profligate and unscrupulous as the 
worst of men ; she had long been active in stimulating all whom 
she could influence against the king, holding up to not unnatural 
ridicule the strange superstitions to which he had latterly yielded, 
when, laying aside for a day or two the practice of his vices, he 
would enrol himself in the number of the Penitents, Flagellants, or 
some other sect of crazy fanatics, walk with them in procession 

1 It was concluded in May 1576, of AlenQon, was still the nominal 
and is known as 'La Paix de Men- leader of the Huguenots. 
sieur,' becavise Monsieur, or the Duke 



166 



MODERN HISTORY. 



fA.D. 1589., 



through the streets with bare feet and shoulders bleeding from the 
lash. She now persuaded herself that to retaliate upon him the 
murder of her brother Guise was a duty; and by unusual caresses 
and promises of still greater favours, induced a fanatical Dominican 
monk, named Jacques Clement, to believe that he should be doing 
a service ' to God by destroying a king who was in alliance with 
heretics, if not a heretic himself. The wretched youth, he was only 
twenty-two, quitted the city, and entering the besiegers' camp, 
procured access to the king on pretence of being the bearer of a 
letter ,• and, while Henry was reading it, plunged a knife into his 
stomach, inflicting a wound which, proving fatal in a few hours, 
extinguished the race of Valois which had reigned over France for 
260 years,^ suffering unparalleled disgraces,'^ perpetrating enormous 
crimes, and atoning for them by singularly few virtues or 
services.* 



1 The first king of the branch of 
Valois was Philip VI., who succeeded 
to the throne in 1328. 

2 Philip VI. was defeated at Shu's 
and Crecy, and lost Calais. John 
was defeated at Poictiers, and died a 
prisoner in England. Charlgs VI., 
after the loss of the battle of Agin- 
court, was compelled bj' the Treaty of 
Troyes to acknowledge a foreign con- 
queror as heir to the kingdom. Charles 
VII. starved himself, from a fear of 
being poisoned by the agents of his 
son, afterwards Louis XI. Louis XI. 
was attacked by the most formidable 
rebellion (with the exception of the 
League) which ever menaced the 
power of any French king. At a 



later period, he was kept prisoner by 
the Duke of Burgundy some days, 
during which he was in hourly dread 
of being put to death : and passed 
all the latter years of his life in 
misery and constant terror, knowing 
himself to be the object of universal 
hatred. The captivity of Francis I., 
the unfortunate death of Henry II., 
and the infamj'- of his sons have been 
related in this volume. 

3 The authorities for the preceding 
chapter, besides the regular Histories 
of France, are chiefly Davila's Guerra 
Civili di Francia, d'Anquetil's Esprit 
de la Ligue, Sully's Blemoires, Pe're- 
fixe's Life of Henry I V. 



4.1), 1589.] HENEY OF NAVARRE. 167 



CHAPTER VIII. 
A.D. 1589—1610. 

HENRY OF NAVARRE, \vho succeeded to the throne aa 
Henry IV., has received the surname of the Great from the 
French historians and poets ; a title which would be more valuable 
if they had been less liberal in bestowing it, and which can hardly 
be said to have been fully deserved by either his talents or his 
virtues. Not, indeed, that he was destitute of either. If, as a 
warrior, he was not so much a skilful commander as a dashing 
leader of cavalry, as a statesman he had a correct perception of 
the feelings of his countrymen, and of the interests of his king- 
dom, united with large and comprehensive views of foreign policy; 
as a king he had a sincere affection for his people. If he was in- 
different to religion, and, as his warmest admirers cannot deny, 
dissolute beyond all measure in his private life : on the other hand, 
he was humane, magnanimous, and forgiving even to those by 
whom he had been most bitterly opposed. And the period at 
which, and the circumstances under which the sovereignty of 
France devolved on him were such as especially to demand and most 
advantageously to display the best qualities of his intellect and 
disposition : for the difficulties of his situation were enhanced 
rather than removed by his succession to the throne. Henry III. 
had been so far from being a favorite at Rome, that the reigning 
Pope, Sextus V., lauded his assassination as much as his pre- 
decessor Gregory XIII. had extolled the Massacre of St. Bartholo- 
mew ; making Clement's crime the subject of an elaborate eulogy; 
in which he compared the assassin himself to Judith and Eleazar- 
Still Henry III. was a Catholic ; and therefore Mayenne's rebellion 
against him, whatever plea the duke might advance for it, was a 
war between two parties of the same religion. But Henry IV. 
was a Huguenot, so that resistance to him could be represented as 
a war in defence of the Catholic religion, and therefore as the duly 
of all sincere Catholics : and so clearly was the degree seen in 
which this consideration would strengthen the League, that, even 
on the day of his accession, the principal nobles of the court urged 
him to return to the Catholic Church, as the sole means of giving 



168 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1589. 

peace to the kingdom. Even one of the most fearless of the Hugue- 
not generals, the celebrated La Noue of the Iron Arm,' expressed 
the same opinion ; and he, in reply, professed a willingness to be 
instructed on the principal points of difference between the two 
religions, that he might adopt the best, having evidently already 
made up his mind to change his creed as soon as he could do so 
with any appearance of decency. But, for the present, he continued 
his adherence to the principles of the Reformation ; and the conse- 
quence was, that the army of which the death of the late king had 
left him the sole commander, melted away ; 20,000 soldiers at once 
quitting his standards, of whom the greater part, going over to 
Mayenne, ranged themselves against him. 

The effect, therefore, of his accession was at first only to ex- 
asperate the war, and also to a certain extent to change its cha- 
racter; since, now that it assumed the appearance of resistance to 
a heretic king, Mayenne had no difficulty in procuring the alliance 
of Philip of Spain, which the unrivalled talents of his great gene- 
ral, the Duke of Parma, rendered of incalculable value ; and since, 
by Philip's advice, the League set up a competitor against Henry 
in the person of his uncle, the Cardinal of Bourbon, whom they 
caused to be proclaimed king in Paris, under the title of Charles X. 
So that from being a manifest rebellion against a sovereign of un- 
disputed right, it became partly a contest between rival claimants 
of the throne, and partly a foreign war between countries of long 
standing enmity to one another. The choice of the cardinal as 
Henry's rival was singularly injudicious; for he was not only in 
notoriously failing health, but he was in Henry's hands at the 
moment, who kept him in close custody at Fontenay, where in the 
succeeding spring he died. Indeed, so manifestly absurd was the 
choice, that the Duchess of Montpensier urged her brother rather 
to aagume the crown himself, as Guise certainly would have assumed 
it. It was sagacious advice, since rebellion admits of no halting 
or of half measures ; but it was too bold for the man to whom it 
was given. Mayenne would not even adopt it after the cardiu.al's 
death ; when it afforded the only possible chance of making the 
contest any longer formidable. Indeed, it may be said that, before 
that event, the eventual result of the war had been already decided 
by two great victories, though it still dragged on its course for 
eight more years. 

Henry had one quality of a great general, a keen sense of the 
value of time. It was by the rapidity of his movements that he 
had won Coutras ; and there never was a foe against whom promp- 
titude and celerity were likely to have greater effect than Mayenne, 

1 So called because he had lost an ami or hand, and had it replaced by- 
one of iron. 



A.D. 1590.] THE BATTLE OF ARQUES. 169 

whose dilatoriness, -wlietlier in deliberation or in action, was in- 
curable. The difference between the two commanders was seen from 
the first. Henry III. had died on the second of August. Henry IV. 
almost immediately fell back on Normandy, in the hope of obtain- 
ing aid from the Queen of England. His armj'^ consisted of les9 
than 8,000 men ; Mayenne's was at least four times that number : 
yet the duke gave him above six weeks' respite, not reaching 
Arques, a small town near Dieppe, till after the middle of Septem- 
ber ; by which time the king had strongly fortified his position, 
and had also equipped a battery of horse artillery, a force which 
had not previously been saw in war. In spite of the vast odds 
in his favour, Mayenne was defeated. Kut the loss on either side 
was trivial, and it was only the efiect which the battle had in increas- 
ing the belief in Henry's ultimate success that made it important. 
As an omen of the future, it.made an impression both in and out of 
France; recruits flocked in to join his army; Elizabeth sent him 
some English regiments ; the Venetians acknowledged him as king 
of France, and even the Pope began to waver, saying that Mayenne 
spent more time over his dinner than Henry spent in bed. Before 
the next Easter his doubts were changed into conviction. At the 
beginning of March, Henry, now at the head of something more 
than 12,000 men, marched against Dreux, a town on the Eure, at 
no great distance from Paris, at that time held by a garrison of the 
League ; and Mayenne, with 25,000 men, including a fine force of 
Spanish cavalry under the young Count Egmont, on hearing of its 
danger, at once hastened to relieve it. Plenry at once abandoned his 
demonstration against Dreux, which indeed had only been a feint to 
disturb the duke's operations ; moving a few miles to the north- 
ward, he drew up his little army on a plain on the banks of the river, 
close to the village of Ivry ; and there, on the afternoon of the thir- 
teenth of March, Mayenne found him in battle array, and ready for in- 
stant conflict. His own troops, however, were too much disordered 
by their march to attack at once, for he had believed Henry's recent 
movement to be the commencement of a retreat, in order to avoid 
a battle ; and had pursued him with little attention to discipline 
or regularity. . It was, however, with great exultation that he now 
found him in his front, and he joyfully spent the evening in 
making arrangements which he doubted not would secure him 
victory on the morrow. Whatever might be the result of the 
coming battle, there could be no doubt that on it depended the fate 
of France. And, in the belief of both armies, they were not the 
only warriors whose exertions were called forth on that eventful 
day. The weather was stormy, with heavy rain, lightning, thunder, 
and violent gusts of wind, aud, .when for a moment the clouds 
rolled away, the strange spectacle was presented of two great 



170 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1590. 

armies figlitiag in the air, witli Tisible bloodshed, thougli fresh 
clouds withdrew the combatants from sight before the issue of the 
combat could be ascertained by the anxious eyes which from below 
were gazing on it.' Nothing short of a triumph on one side or the 
other absolutely decisive of the contest could be portended by 
such manifest agitation in heaven itself. 

That it should be decisive, Henry at least was resolved. When 
one of his staff remarked, that he had made no provision for a 
retreat, should such a movement become necessary, he replied that 
' There was no retreat but the field of battle.' And, whoever else 
might fly, that field he would never quit except as a conqueror. 
He had at all times eminently the art of diffusing confidence among 
his followers; and the brief harangue which he addressed to the 
squadron, which he himself was preparing to lead, could not fail to 
inspire the faintest heart witli courage to share the danger which 
his king so gallantly confronted. ' My comrades,' said he, ' God 
is on our side. You see his enemies and our own ; and you see 
your king. We will cliarge them. If you lose sight of your 
standards, rally to my white plume. You will find it in the road 
to victory and honour.' For Henry wote no helmet, such as gene- 
rally protected warriors in that age, but a velvet hat, with a large 
white plume, that he might be throughout visible to all his fol- 
lowers. Who would not fight for such a chief? He had chosen 
his position with judgment; two villages, St. Andre and Turcan- 
ville protected his flanks, while some inequalities in the ground 
protected his men from Mayenne's artillery. His own cannon 
were far less numerous, so that his reliance was necessarily placed 
on the personal valour and prowess of his men ; especially he trusted 
to his cavalry, who were chiefly men of gentle birth, and from 
whom, therefore, in his opinion, a more sustained courage might 
be expected than any other division ; and among those who stood 
by his side on this day were many already known as the choicest 
warriors of France, and others who now laid the foundations of a 
fame which at a later period was celebrated throughout Europe. 
There was the Marshal d'Aumont, whom even the rebels regarded 
with esteem for his unflinching courage, already shown in more 
than one bloody combat, and whose skill and presence of mind 
had no trifling influence on the fortune of this diiy ; there was the 
elder Biron, a veteran who, thirty years before, had won no slight 
honour among the defenders of Metz ; the younger Biron, to whom 

1 Sully, who relates his own sight • derived his account from soldiers 
of this strange engagement, hesitates of the League, and who also records 
to affirm its reality : ' Je ne sais si the circumstance, expresses no doubt 
c'est realite ou ilh'ision.'— Book iii., whatever. — Book xi., p. 116, Ed. 
p. 353. But Davila, who probably London, 1755. 



A.D. 1590.] THE BATTLE OF J.VRY. 171 

Henry himself was more than once to owe his personal safety, 
though his sad end proved that his loyalty was not equal to his 
courage or military skill ; there was de Rosny, commander of the 
artillery, subsequently to add to great renown as a soldier the still 
higher reputation of a wise and patriotic statesman ; and Schom- 
bery, the grandsire of the gallant veteran, who, being driven from 
France for the religion which his ancestors were now maintaining, 
poured forth his blood in the service of a British sovereign. These, 
and others like them, led on their men gallantly ; yet, in spite of 
all their efforts, it seemed at first that their courage could only 
lead to their destruction. Egmont, the Spanish general, was a 
man of arrogant temper. Chafing at Mayenne's general slowness, 
he had declared on the preceding night that, if the duke were not 
quicker than usual, he and his Spaniards would win the battle be- 
fore he came up. And now he would not wait for his comrade, 
though he was commander-in-chief, but with his own battalions 
and a squadron of German reitres charged the Royalist division in 
his front, as if he alone could decide the fate of the day. And for 
a moment it seemed as if his confidence were not misplaced. 
Though he was but coldly supported by the Germans, who, being 
Protestants themselves, would not fire on their brother Reformers, 
so irresistible was his onset that he broke and routed the light 
cavalry, which was the object of his attack, forced his way through 
the mass till he reached the only battery which Henry possessed; 
and, had he pressed on at once, he might have fulfilled his boast. 
But as he came up to the guns he halted, to show his disdain of the 
heretics, as he called the gilnners, with unseemly reproaches and 
gestures of contempt ; and thus, by childish bravado, threw away 
the advantage which he had gained. His men were thrown into 
disorder by the suddenness of the halt, and before they could re- 
cover themselves, Givri, the commander of the bi'oken light horse, 
had rallied his squadrons, and, nobly supported by d'Aumont and 
the younger Biron, fell in their turn upon him, and cut his whole 
division to pieces, he himself being among the first to fall. 
Flushed with success, the conquerors fell upon Mayenne's lancers, 
who were coming up under Tavannes, son of the veteran marshal 
who had borne so bloody apart in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
supported by some fresh squadrons of heavy German Catholics; 
and between these battalions the contest raged fiercely for a while, 
for Tavannes, like his father, was a stout and skilful soldier, he 
had a great advantage of numbers, and his men added the fierce- 
ness of religious hatred to the tenacity engendered by discipline 
and the experience of a hundred fights. But Henry, though at a 
distance, perceived how nearly the strife in tliat part of the field 
was balanced, and how critical was the moment: gathering round 



172 MODEEN HISTOKY. [a.d. 1590. 

him a few squadrons, he hastened to the spot, and, charging both 
lancers and Germans with irresistible fury, drove them and 
Mayenne himself, who was in their rear, off the field. Their rout 
imcovered the infantry, who, finding themselves unsupported and 
isolated in the midst of the field, and attacked on all sides by the 
king's victorious cavalry, made but little resistance, while a large 
body of Swiss pikemen laid down their arms without striking a 
blow. Another division of German landsknechts followed their 
example, and in less than two hours the battle was over. Great 
was the glory won by the conquerors. Henry's chief officers had 
fought each as if the fortune of the day depended on his single 
arm. Rosny had had two horses killed under him, and had al- 
ready received five severe wounds, when a pistol shot and a sabre 
cut on the head laid him senseless on the ground : Schomberg 
was killed while performing prodigies of valour : d'Aumont's 
judgment and promptitude of decision, in the judgment of Sully 
himself, had contributed in no slight degree to the preservation of 
the light cavalry and the subsequent gaining of the victory. But 
conspicuous above all, was the king himself, plunging everywhere 
into the thickest of the fight, and more than once selecting some 
trooper of unusual prowess in the hostile ranks and slaying him 
with his own hand. So reckless was his exposure of himself that 
the Marshal Biron, who had been posted by him in the rear, as 
commander of the reserve, expostulated with him on the danger 
which he had run, when an injury to himself would have involved 
the loss of the whole cause. Even when the victory was won he 
did not cease from his exertions, though then they had a diiFeient 
object, the protection of those who were vanquished from the fury 
of his own men. ' Save the French,' he cried, as he ranged over 
the field, ' but show no mercy to the foreigners,' for he looked on 
the landsknechts as deserters, since they had for the most part 
been enlisted among his own partisans in Germany, in Hesse, in 
Ulm, and in Nuremberg, for his own service, but had been seduced 
on the march, bj' the bribes and promises of the Duke of Lorraine, 
to violate their engagements, and to fight against him on the side 
of the League. His own loss had been comparatively trifling ; that 
of Mayenne was reckoned to amount to a fourth of his army : but 
the importance of the victory was not to be estimated by the num- 
ber of the slain. It was universally looked on as decisive of the 
entire war. That Mayenne himself so regarded it was proved by 
the circumstance that when, as has already been mentioned, the 
titular king, the Cardinal Bourbon died, as he did die a few weeks 
afterwards, no one was set up in his place as Henry's competitor 
for the throne ; so that from henceforth the question became, not 
whether Henry or some other rival should be acknowledged as 



A.n. 1593.] HENRY IS CEOWNED AT CHAETRES. 173 

king, but only liow soon the resistance to Henry should he 
abandoned. Even when Philip, seeing that increased exertions 
"were needed to restore the balance, sent Parma himself to join 
Mayenue with an army almost equal in number to that which had 
fought at Ivry, that great commander was unable to effect anything 
which could alter the complexion of the war. He succeeded, 
indeed, more than once in outgeneralling Henry; in relieving 
Paris, which the king invested immediately after his victory, and 
in compelling him afterwards to raise the siege of Rouen : but his 
successes of this kind rather weakened the reputation of Mayenne 
himself, and the expectation of eventual triumph to the League, 
since they seemed to show that they relied wholly on foreign aid, 
and that without it they were unable to maintain the contest. 
And when, in the spring of 1592, the great Spaniard received a 
wound Avhich eventually proved mortal, the most sanguine of 
Mayenne's partisans began to despair, and to direct their attention 
to making separate terms for themselves. 

When this was their disposition, Henry thought that the time 
was come for him to give them an excuse for joining him, by con- 
forming to the religion which the majority professed. In the 
summer of 1593 he invited some divines of both Churches to dis- 
cuss the doctrines on which they differed in his pi-esence ; and, 
having terminated a brief conference by declaring himself satisfied 
of the Papal theology, he was formally admitted into the Catholic 
Church. It must be allowed that no one ever changed his reli- 
gion with such plausible reasons to j ustify the step. The political 
necessity of it was so palpable, that Sully,^ though himself a Pro- 
testant, fully approved of his conduct, and even affirms that the 
Protestant doctors who appeared before the king as champions of 
their religion purposely abstained from bringing forward their 
strongest arguments, and allowed the victory to rest with their 
opponents, so convinced were they that it was for the interests of 
the Huguenot body, as well as of the nation at large, that he 
should be fixed on the throne, and that, without his adoption of 
the Papal faith, that result could not be attained. ■ 

The fruits of his conversion were rapidly gathered. Cities 
came over to him ; provinces came over. Before the end of the 
winter he was solemnly crowned King of France at Cbartres, and 
in less than a month afterwards the governor of the metropolis 

* Henrj^'s great minister, first it seems most convenient to speak of 
known as the Baron de Eosny. him byit tliroughout. He left behiod 
Indeed, he was not raised to the him eight volumes of Memoirs, writ- 
dukedom of Sully till some years ten with admirable candour, which 
later than the time of which we are are our chief authority for the events 
speaking; but he is so exclusively of Henry's reign, 
known to posterity by that title that 



174 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1595. 

itself tendered Lis allegiance to him, and, not indeed -without 
receiving an enormous reward for his submission, admitted him 
into the city in which he had not yet set foot since he had hecome 
its sovereign. It was a proud moment for Henry when the pro- 
vost of the city presented him with the keys on the Pont Neuf, 
the vast assemblage of citizens that had collected to witness his 
entry echoing the governor's shout of ' Long live the King ! ' and 
when, having returned thanks to God in the great cathedral, he 
passed on to take up his residence in the Louvre, in which, as he 
could not fail to recollect, he had once been with difficulty saved 
from slaughter. 

^ And if the submission of the capital was sufficient to prove to the 
cities which still held out against the impossibility of long main- 
taining their resistance, the generosity of his treatment of the 
citizens equally showed the impolicy of such an attempt. It was 
on occasions such as these that Henry's true magnanimity dis- 
played itself, in the frank confidence which his every act showed 
in the sinceritj^ of their revived loyalty. It seemed as if the 
moment they received him within their walls had wholly banished 
from his mind all recollection of their past rebellion. He moved 
about the city as freely, unattended save by a few officers, as 
Francis or Louis XII. had done ; and when the populace crowded 
round him, and his attendants would have bid them keep a more 
respectful distance, ' Let them come near,' he would say, ' they 
are famishing for the sight of a king.' And, as if he desired that 
they themselves might not remember what he himself thus reso- 
lutely forgot, he effaced from the public records and monuments 
all memorials and traces of the recent transactions, and by this 
course of delicate humanity gave those who had been most promi- 
nent in rebellion the same confidence in him which he exhibited 
towards them, and prevented them from fearing that their past 
disloyalty had only been forgiven in appearance, and would still 
be secretly remembered to their prejudice. He extended his 
courtesy even to the Duchess of Montpensier, Mayenne's sister, 
though he knew her to have been the chief instigator of the 
assassination of the last king, and had good reason to believe that 
she had endeavoured to compass his own destruction in the same 
manner. 

The civil war was in effect over. Mayenne was now acting 
rather as an ally of the Spaniards than as a principal in the con- 
test; and, gradually becoming jealous of and discontented with his 
confederate, even he, in the following year, surrendered Dijon, the 
capital of Burgundy, of which he was governor, and made his 
peace with the king, and, after a time, accepted the command of 
a division to act against the armies which he himself had first 



A.-D. 1598.] THE EDICT OF NANTES. 175 

introduced into the country. At last Philip himself grew weary 
of a costly warfare in which he was reaping no honour, and from 
which no profit could be expected. In the first month of 1598 
negotiations were opened at Vervins, in Picardy, and there, at the 
beginning of May, a treaty of peace was concluded, which left the 
two countries in the same position as at the beginning of the war. 
It was, perhaps, to show how thoroughly unimportant he consi- 
dered either the friendship or the enmity of Spain, that, three 
weeks before Henry affixed his signature to that treaty, he 
signed a document which of all others was most offensive to 
Philip, but which that monarch could not dare to resent. He issued 
a statute known as the Edict of Nantes, which established 
throughout the kingdom the great principle of religious toleration, 
with the single exception of some restrictions being imposed on 
the practice of Huguenot worship in Paris itself and the districts 
immediately adjacent. In every other part of the kingdom its 
free exercise was permitted. Every kind of civil and military 
employment was thrown open to the Protestants ; they were 
allowed to raise money from the members of their own body, and 
in all the provincial parliaments ^ a separate tribunal was esta- 
blished, consisting of Catholics and Protestants in equal number, 
which was to have exclusive jurisdiction in all cases in which 
Protestants, as such, were concerned. There might well be a 
question as to the policy of this last concession ; but there could be 
none of the extent to which the whole edict proved Henry's con- 
viction of the completeness and absoluteness of his authority, since 
it was little short of a direct challenge to Philip to break off the 
negotiations for peace, and since it was so offensive to the bulk of 
the Roman Catholic priesthood in his own kingdom that they had 
wrought on the Parliament of Paris to threaten to refuse registra- 
tion to the edict. But such refusals on the part of that body 
were mere attempts at the usurpation of powers which did not 
belong to it ; and, with all his affability and humanity, no king 
ever sat on the French throne who was less disposed to submit 
to any unconstitutional interference with his prerogative. His 
manner of meeting their menaced disobedience was eminently 
characteristic. He adoiitted a deputation to discuss the measure 
with him, encouraging them to freedom of speech by telling them 
that * he received them, not in his royal robes, or with his sword 

1 The French Parliaments had no and other bodies, bearing the same 

resemblance to the British bodj' bear- title, and ha\'ins the same general 

ing the same name. The Parliament powers, had gradually been esta- 

of Paris was the chief court of justice Wished in some of the principal pro- 

in the kingdom, being divided into vinces. Thus there was a Parliament 

several chambers, each having cog- of Toulouse, a Parliament of Pro- 

nisauce of causes of different kinds ; vence, &c. &c. 



176 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1598. 

by liis side, but in bis gray doublet of peace, as a father preferred 
to converse with bis children ; ' but be ended tbe conference by 
declaring tbat * be should compel tbe observance of tbe edict, that 
it did not belong to them to demand reasons for his conduct; bis 
will was reason enough. He was their king, and be would be 
obeyed.' And obeyed be was. The edict was duly registered; 
and, though in su.bsequent years the Protestants were compelled 
to submit to modifications of some of its provisions, it secured 
them substantial toleration for nearly a century. 

The peace that was thus concluded lasted, with tbe exception 
of a trifling dispute with Savoy, till tbe end of Henry's reign ; 
and no country bad ever bad more urgent need of a long period 
of tranquillity to enable it to recover from the effects of the 
dissensions and cruel civil wars by which it had so long been 
torn asimder. No country had ever been reduced to so com- 
plete a state of exhaustion; the very sources of future wealth 
seemed to be dried up ; commerce and trade bad been annihilated. 
Manufactures had fallen into disuse : agriculture itself had become 
almost a forgotten art ; tbe population, too, as was ineyitable, had 
greatly diminished. It was estimated that in the forty years 
which had elapsed since tbe accession of Charles, 128,000 bouses 
bad been destroyed, and a million of people bad been killed, while 
of those who survived, numbers were reduced to beggary and 
ruin. The destitution indeed was universal : it bad penetrated even 
into the king's palace. A year or two before Henry had described 
bis poverty and tbe personal privations to which be was himself 
reduced in terms which are almost ludicrous when the natural 
resources of tbe country and his position as its king are remem- 
bered. In a letter to Sully, written in 1596, he declared to him 
that, ' though the enemy were close at band, be might almost say 
tbat be bad neither a horse to ride nor harness to put over him ; 
bis shirts were in rags ; bis doublets were out at elbows ; bis larder 
was empty, and be was often obliged to beg a dinner from one or 
other of his nobles, because his own steward was unable to provide 
him with one.' To this old tried servant and comrade, who had 
hitherto been known only as a valiant and skilful officer of 
artillery, be now entrusted the retrieval of the prosperity of the 
coiintry, the regulation of the finances, in short, the whole internal 
government of the kingdom. Nor could the task possibly have 
been committed to more energetic, and, what in those days was 
harder far to find, more incorruptible bands. In the history of 
France three great finance ministers force themselves upon our 
notice. Sully, Colbert, and Turgot. Peculiar difficulties beset the 
path of each ; Turgot, the most virtuous and most enlightened of 
the three, found those which surrounded him insurmountable. 



A.». 1598.] LICENTIOUSNESS OF HENEY. 177 

Yet even in the melancholy days of Louis XVI., the extrication 
of the state could hardly have appeared so hopeless as it did when 
Sully first exchanged his svrord for a pen; and undertook to 
give battle, no longer to the armed enemies of his sovereign, but 
to the long train of corrupt and insatiable courtiers and officials, 
who, in the garb of peace, were carrying on a more deadly warfare 
against the country through the abuses which were preying or 
its vitals, and by which they lived. 

He was supported, he could not have held his ground for a 
moment had he not been supported, by the unshaken confidence 
and protection of the king. Yet the chief hindrance to his 
schemes of retrenchment and economy came from Henry himself; 
through his unrestrained self-indulgence and prodigality. Francis 
himself had not set a more shameless example of licentiousness, 
in the gratification of which he, at times, condescended to acts of 
unprecedented tyranny, even compelling one of the most zealous 
and faithful of his own adherents, the Duke of Bellegarde, to 
withdraw his suit for the hand of the fair Gabi'iell ed'Estrees, to 
whom he was already betrothed, because he desired to make her 
his own mistress. He was addicted almost equally to gambling, 
in which he must have been singularly unskilful or unlucky, as 
was proved by the enormous demands which were continually 
made upon his minister for the discharge of his losses at play. So 
that Sully reckoned that his annual expenditure on his mistresses, 
the gaming-table, and his hounds, with other objects of personal 
luxur}', reached the prodigious amount of 1,200,000 crowns, a sum 
which, as he sorrowfully remarks, would have kept on foot an 
army of 15,000 men. Without bearing these habits in mind, we 
cannot form a just estimate of Henry's character, to the under- 
standing of which it is equally a matter of justice to recollect the 
good-humour with which he permitted his minister's remon- 
strances on the subject. For, dangerous as it generally is to 
interfere with the private amusements, or to reprove the personal 
weaknesses of a king, Sully was too faithful to his master's real 
interests to forbear to do sof. Henry admitted the truth of his 
reproaches, the wastefulness of his expenditure, the unworthiness 
of his female favorites ; but he made no efi'ort to shake off the 
empire of the vices which he confessed, and rather took credit for 
rarely suifering the ladies to influence him in affairs of state, for 
shutting his ears against the slanderous detractions with which 
they sought to i-etaliate the minister's ill-will, and for the frank- 
ness with which he often assured them tliat he would rather 
sacrifice ten mistresses than one such councillor as Sully. 

Yet, in spite of prodigality on one side, and rapacity and cor- 
ruption on the other, such were Sully's energy and fertility of 



178 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1598. 

resource, that before Henry's death he had raised the kingdom 
to a height of financial prosperity that it had never before enjoyed ; 
and the achievement is the more remarkable if we consider that 
he had had no previous commercial or official training, and that 
he was entirely ignorant of political economy: but he had 
penetration and he had courage. And, as the chief cause of the 
impoverished state of the royal treasury was the prevalence of 
every kind of abuse, both of mismanagement and dishonesty, 
which intercepted five-sixths of the revenue before it ever reached 
the royal treasury, those qualities were far more useful to the 
state than any amount of commercial or economical knowledge 
on his part could have been. In the discharge of his duty he 
cared not whom he offended. He revised the contracts of the 
farmers of the revenues, and reduced their gains; he discharged 
superfluous officers ; he recovered estates properly belonging to 
the crown, but illegally appropriated by private individuals ; he 
introduced a new system of keeping and checking the public 
accoimts ; and by these and other reforms, conceived in a similar 
spirit, and unflinchingly carried out, he was enabled largely to 
reduce the taxation which pressed unduly upon many classes, and 
especially on the agriculturists, whom he looked on as the lifeblood 
of the state ; and at the same time not only to give encouragement 
to the established manufactures of the country, but, by a judici- 
ous system of bounties, to attract to the country artisans skilled in 
the production of fabrics which had previously been imported from 
other lands, thus conferring a permanent benefit on his country- 
men ; for if, in our day, the carpet-makers of Aubusson and the 
silk- weavers of Lyons have surpassed all competition in the rich- 
ness and delicacy of their productions, it is to Sully they owe it ; 
since it was he who allured workmen, skilled in those arts, from 
Holland and from Italy to settle in France, and teach the quick- 
witted natives, whom an innate taste and ingenuity had prepared 
beforehand to excel in such employments, to equal and outshine 
their masters. 

Only twelve years elapsed between the Peace of Vervins and the 
death of Hemy, which terminated his glorious and beneficent 
administration ; but the results which he had accomplished in that 
brief time might be taken for the work of generations. He had 
found France surrounded with apparently inextricable dangers, if 
not overwhelmed in irretrievable ruin ; he left it secure, tranquil, 
and prosperous. He had found the national exchequer bankrupt ; 
he left it not only solvent, but enriched with a vast accumulated 
treasure, available for defence or for conquest. He had embellished 
the capital with public buildings ; with churches, hospitals, 
bridges, and quays ; he had strengthened the provincial and frontier 



&.T). 1600.] POLICY OF HENRY. 179 

towns with well-planned fortresses; lie had facilitated communi- 
cation by hig-hways and canals ; the army was re-equipped ; a 
navy, a force which had scarcely been seen in France since the 
battle of Sluys, was rising up in new dockyards ; what was most 
important of all, as being the foundation of all other prosperity, 
the supremacy of the law was re-established : and with it a healthy 
hopeful spirit had revived in the people, the parent of energy and 
future improvement. 

The re-establishnient of the authority of the law was in a great 
degi'ee the work of Henry himself; who, while he left all matters 
affecting the finance of the kingdom to his minister, laid down 
two objects, one of domestic and one of foreign policy, to be 
carried out by himself. They may indeed be looked on as two 
developments of the same policy : the depression of all rivals ; the 
nobles were the rivals of himself ; the House of Austria was the 
rival of France ; and he resolved, therefore, to put down the 
power of the nobles, as being incompatible with his own kingly 
authority, and to diminish the weight and influence of the House 
of Austria, that he might make France the arbitress of Europe in 
her stead. The two schemes diff"ered in one point : that, while the 
one was an aggressive, the other was a purely defensive policy. 
If the overgrown power of the nobles had. not been the original 
cause of the civil wars, it had certainly greatly protracted them, 
and had stamped them with the bitterness and ferocity which had 
characterised them in so unusual, a degree, so that he might 
fairly look on its reduction as a policy of self-defence, as indis- 
pensable to the preservation of his legitimate authority. And he 
carried out his design with great address and prudence, regulating 
his distribution of the governments of the different provinces and 
cities so as to prevent those on whom he conferred them from 
obtaining any local influence; and making and changing all 
military appointments in such a way as to show that all the 
honours in the state, both in their first acquisition and their caiPi- 
tinuance, depended solely on his own will. His life was not 
sufficiently protracted to enable him fully to complete his ptajpose ; 
but his views were adopted by his successor, and, half a centujy 
after his death, were fully consummated by his. grandsoa. 

They were not, indeed, accomplished without a series of 
struggles ; the nobles were as keen-sighted as himseSf, pereeiving 
his object from the first, and resisting ifc by ewmbinatioQ, by,- 
intrigue, and more than once by open force^;; for the- strangOf^ 
rebellion of the Fronde, of which we shall Siere-after speak, w«Ss 
but the last of their efforts to. dictate to- thetjf sovereiga. Ar^d aitr 
the very outset one formidable conspji-acy'&s-tjhat object wft^ssett 
on foot by the very jaable whom, next to Qi\iMj, Henry, hjgLd.lthte' 



180 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1600. 

greatest reason to esteem, and to wlioni lie had the strongest 
motives to feel grateful, for the Duke de Biron was pre-eminent 
above all his generals for military ability, and to his skill and 
dauntless promptitude of courage Henry had more than once 
owed his escape from captivity, if not his life. Unluckily, the 
duke added to his great qualities a full share of that arrogance 
and rapacity which were as common to the French nobles of his 
day as their courage ; he was sensible of the greatness of his 
services to the crown ; he was discontented at the inadequacy, as 
he considered it, of the rewards which they had obtained for him, 
and he conceived the idea of establishing not only himself, but 
the other great nobles throughout the kingdom, in a position 
which should enable him and them to dictate to their sovereign 
the terms by which their loyalty should be recompensed. In 
former days several of the dukes and counts, though nominally 
subjects of the crown, had been, in fact, independent princes; 
and he proposed to bring back that state of aflFairs, and to establish 
himself and others in the position which the Dukes of Burgundy 
and Counts of Anjou had formerly occupied, reckoning on easily 
gaining the concurrence of the nobles who were to be aggrandised, 
on rousing a strong party among the lower orders to support him 
by the promise of a reduction of taxes, and on obtaining the aid of 
the King of Spain, with whom he had already begun to negotiate 
by an engagement, that some of these provinces thus to be erected 
into principalities should be held of him as their sovereign lord, 
and not of the King of France. 

Such a scheme was, in fact, a plot for the dismemberment of the 
kingdom; it was treason of the foulest kind; and it was well laid 
in every point, but one. While planning treachery against his 
king and country, Biron overlooked the necessity of guarding 
against treachery to himself : his plot was betrayed to the king, 
by his own secretary, from the first moment; and Henry's con- 
duct in dealing with it was equally marked by humanity and by 
firmness. As a man and a comi'ade, he could not but regard the 
criminal with kindness, for he was fa,r from undervaluing his 
great deeds, though the necessities of his own peculiar situation 
had prevented him from recompensing them as the duke had 
expected, and as he himself would have desired ; but as a father 
and a king he was bound to regard the tranquillity and welfare of 
his kingdom and the safety of his own dynasty. In his dealings 
with the chiefs of the League he had exercised and had proved 
the benefit of a magnanimous clemency ; and the pardon which he 
had granted to persevering enemies he naturally wished to extend 
to one who had so long been a friend. In many a conference 
with the duke he exerted all his powers of persuasion to induce 



A.D. 1604.] CONSPIEACY OF BIEON. 181 

him to confess liis treasons, being resolved to forgive all if by 
confession and repentance the criminal would enable him to show 
mercy. But Biron, who had no suspicion of his secretary's fidelity, 
and who consequently looked on the success of his designs as in- 
evitable, was obstinate in declaring that he had nothing to confess. 
Sully who, Henry hoped, as a fellow subject might be more suc- 
cessful in softening him, equally failed ; and, it was not till every 
resource of kindness had been tried in vain, that Henry at last 
aiTested him, brought him to trial, and sent him to the scaffold, 
truly telling the queen, whom his relations had induced to inter- 
cede for his life, that his execution had become indispensable for 
the safety of herself and her son. And no sterner warning could 
have been given to the rest of the nobles, no more memorable 
proof that the power of the crown had again become superior 
to theirs, than the fate of that one of their body who was secretly 
supported by the connivance and good wishes of many among 
them, who was pre-eminent above them all in military gloiy. 

The queen, however, was not she whom Catharine had given 
Henry as his bride, and marriage with whom had been with such 
difficulty allowed to save him from murder. Even in that age 
few women disgraced their sex by such open dissoluteness of 
manners as Marguerite, who had long been separated from her hus- 
band, and had been living at Usson, in the south, in the practice 
of as ceaseless and undisguised licentiousness as Henry himself. He 
did not pretend to feel the least uneasiness at her conduct, or concern 
for her character; but, when he had become fixed on the throne, 
he began to desire a legitimate son to succeed him, and, by the 
offer of a large annuity, to purchase her consent to a divorce. 
While she understood his object to be, as indeed it was at first, 
to many his mistress Gabrielle, she refused to acquiesce in a 
measure which was to replace her by such a successor; but, 
after Gabrielle died, in 1599, she became more compliant, joining 
Henry in an application to the Pope for a sentence of divorce : 
and, in the autumn of 1600, the king married Marie de Medici, a 
niece of the Duke of Florence, and a near kinswoman of that queen 
whose influence had, within his own memory, been so disgraceful 
and pernicious to France, and so dangerous to himself. 

Another branch of what may be called home policy, in which 
Henry took especial interest, was the promotion and development 
of the foreign trade of the kingdom. Sullj^'s trust in the power of 
agriculture and manufactures to raise a country to prosperity was 
so implicit, that he undervalued, if he did not wholly neglect, 
foreign commerce. But Henry, on this subject, was wiser than 
he : he had formed a great opinion of Queen Elizabeth's prac- 
tical wisdom ; and, .as she had recently granted some of her mer- 



182 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1601.. 

chants a charter to trade to the East Indies, he, in 1604, signed a 
patent for the establishment of a similar company ; and in another 
quarter he even endeavoured to lay the foundation of what should 
be something more than a commercial settlement, by sending a 
colony to Canada, where it flourished for above a century and 
a half, in spite of Sully's prediction that no kind of wealth could 
be looked for from any district in the New World beyond the 40th 
degree of north latitude (a maxim which he regarded as so indis- 
putable that he records it with approval in the Memoirs which he 
compiled after the king's death). The more highly we rate his 
general wisdom, and the benefits which the nation derived from 
his administration, the greater ought to be our appreciation of the 
sagacity of the king himself, who, in these points, was wiser than 
his minister, and whose convictions were so clear that he carried 
them out against all remonstrances. 

But, in his scheme of foreign policy, in what Sully calls ' the 
project of humbling the House of Austria,' king and minister 
were in entire agreement. Sully had too sincere a regard for the 
real welfare of his master and of his country, and was too fearless 
and honest, to forbear seizing every opportunity of restraining the 
prodigal facility with which he squandered his treasures ; and 
the argument with which he crowned all his recommendations of 
greater economy was, that it was indispensable to the commence- 
ment of hostilities against Spain and the Empire. For though, 
since the death of Charles V., the Imperial and the Spanish 
thrones were no longer united, one common policy still influenced 
the two cabinets ; while the Empire itself had, since Charles's 
death, been greatly strengthened by the addition of Bohemia and 
Hungary, of which Ferdinand, who succeeded him, had become 
king in his brother's lifetime. Against two such powers, however 
great might be his confidence in the military spirit and resources 
of France, Henry did not think her able to contend single-handed. 
But he knew how deep was the hatred which England enter- 
tained against Spain, and he conceived a hope that Elizabeth 
would easily be brought to combine with him in an enterprise 
which would at once avenge the insults offered to her and to her 
people by the Armada, and would secure both against any repeti- 
tion of them. Impressed with this idea, in 1601 he sent Sully on 
a secret mission to England; when the duke was both delighted 
and surprised to find that the statesmanlike queen had in a great 
measure anticipated his designs. She, too, had formed projects for 
humbling and weakening the common enemy; which, as she 
sketched them out rapidly to the ambassador, were to cripple 
Spain by the erection of one republic out of her richest provinces, 



A.D. 1604.J NEGOTIATIONS WITH ELIZABETH. 183 

to curb the Empire by tbe creation of another/ and to parcel out 
the rest of Christendom into a number of kingdoms of almost 
equal power. So delighted was Henry with his report of the 
great queen's largeness of -view and resolution, that the next year 
he sent Biron over on a formal embassy ; when, if that misguided 
noble had been capable of learning a lesson for his own conduct, 
the language which Elizabeth held to him about the then recent 
execution of her once favorite Essex might have saved him from 
the conduct which involved him in a similar doom : '^ and Sully 
was on the point of returning to England to discuss the design 
with her in fuller detail, when the intelligence of the queen's 
death reached France. Plenry was profoundly grieved. He had 
looked upon her, as he wrote to Sully, as 'the irreconcil- 
able enemy of his irreconcilable enemies,' as 'a second self.' 
However, he did not lay aside the idea of securing the co-opera- 
tion of England, but sent Sully to gain over the new king to the 
adoption of his views ; and as he thought James less likely than 
his more energetic predecessor to be influenced by large general 
views of policy, he appealed more directly to the feelings of bitter 
enmity to Popery which he conceived him to have imbibed among 
the Scotch Reformers, and authorised his minister to bind him to 
unite with the British government in supporting the Protestants 
in all those countries on the Continent in which their religion was 
established. A more curious proof of how little importance he 
himself attached to religious as compared with political consi- 
derations could hardly be imagined than that which is supplied by 
a Catholic king promising to support the Protestants in Germany, 
in order to induce another Protestant to aid him in a war against 
the principal Catholic powers. But Sully found that James was 
equally inclined to place temporal considerations above those of 
religion,- and that his view of such did not altogether coincide 
with those of his own master. In James's opinion nothing was 
so sacred as the right of kings ; and he was far more inclined to 
wish success to Philip in subduing the Netherlands, than to sup- 
port the Dutch in what he regarded as rebellion. However, at 
last, Sully's address prevailed over his scruples on this point ; and 
finally James signed a treaty which bound him to combine his 
eflbrts with those of Henry in support of the United States of 

^ The whole of the Netherlands, which had persuaded him that she 

both the Catholic and the Protestant could not do without him ; and that. 

States, were to form one common- if Henry wished to remain safe on his 

wealth ; Switzerland, Alsace, and throne, he ought to follow her ex- 

Franche-Comte' another. ample, and to show no mercy to 

^ Elizabeth told Biron that Essex traitors, 
had been mined by his own pride, 



184 MODEIIN HISTORY. [a.d. 1604, 

Holland against Philip : the French king correctly judging that, 
to render his meditated attack on the Empire effectual, it was 
desirable first to cripple her ally, and that no heavier blow could 
be inflicted on Spain than the loss of her wealthiest dependency in 
Europe. 

So far the arrangements for ' the great design ' seemed to be 
prospering according to Henry's utmost wish. But his very 
success led to his death. A few years before, when a wretched 
Jesuit, named Ohastel, had endeavoured to assassinate him, he 
had wisely taken advantage of the opportunity thus afforded him 
to banish the whole body of Jesuits from the kingdom. But, in 
1609, from an idea that policy required him to conciliate the 
Catholics, who were his own subjects, before commencing the 
war which he meditated against the principal Catholic sovereigns, 
he revoked the sentence of banishment, and even ordered the 
demolition of a pillar which, in recording Chastel's guilt, imputed 
it to the direct instigation of the chiefs of the Jesuit Order. 
But there were many among his Catholic subjects whom such a 
step, however important, could not reconcile to his design of 
warring upon the sovereigns whom theiy looked upon as the chief 
pillars of the Catholic religion. And, as we may learn from the 
history of our own country, it was an age in which a depth of 
religious feeling had especial tendency to degenerate into that 
fanaticism which thinks any means justifiable that lead to its 
object. Queen Marie, herself, had been led by her bigotted 
attachment to her Church to aid in betraying her husband's 
designs to the Spanish Court. And a fanatical schoolmaster of 
Auvergne, named Fran9ois Ravaillac, was wrought upon to fancy 
it his duty to prevent the accomplishment of his plans, even by his 
murder. At the beginning of 1610, Henry was beginning to levy 
a powerful army, nominally in order to settle some disputes that 
had arisen with respect to the succession to the Duchy of Cleves, 
really intending, as was generally believed, to employ it in carry- 
ing off from Brussels the Princess of Conde, with whom, though 
her husband was his near relation, he had fallen in lore ; and to 
soothe his queen, who looked with little favour on his avowed 
object, and with more justifiable jealousy on his real design, he 
consented to appoint her regent of the kingdom during his 
absence in the field, and to augment the dignity of the appoint- 
ment by her coronation, a ceremony which had not yet been 
performed. It was not without the greatest reluctance, indeed, 
that he had been brought to acquiesce in this arrangement ; for 
though, in other matters, as far removed as any man from the 
weaknesses of superstition, he was not so superior to the pre- 
judices of his age as to refuse his belief to astrology. And some 



A.D. 1610.] MUEDER OF HENRY. 185 

astrologers had ■warned him that be should die in a coach on the 
occasion of some public ceremony. However, the importunities of 
Marie overruled his apprehensions ; though they were not only 
deeply impressed in his own mind, but were so shared by Sully 
that that minister advised him, if he could not postpone the 
coronation, at all events to absent himself from it, and on no 
account to enter a carriage. 

But Henry, like many other men, while unable to banish his 
fears from his mind, was ashamed to make so public an avowal of 
them jis would have been implied by a change of purpose. The 
day was fixed for the thirteenth of May 1610 ; on that day it was 
solemnised with great pomp and magnificence in tlie Cathedral 
of St. Denis ; and, since nothing had occurred to intercept the 
ceremony, his apprehensions seemed to have been groundless. 
Almost convinced that the danger was past, the next day he drove 
down to the arsenal to concert with Sully the final arrangements 
for the approaching campaign. A splendid staff of nobles accom- 
panied him in the carriage ; and, as the day was fine, the curtains 
were drawn back, that he might see the preparations which were 
making for the public entry into the capital of the newly-crowned 
c[ueen, which was fixed for two days afterwards, and might, in his 
turn, be seen by the citizens, who followed him with shouts and 
cheers. The carriage was surrounded by pages and running foot- 
men, who were busily engaged in clearing one of the narrow 
streets of some carts which blocked the way, when Ravaillac, 
taking advantage of the stoppage, and forcing his way through the 
crowd, sprang on one of the hind wheels of the carriage, and, 
leaning over the back, stabbed Henry in the side : before the 
alarm could be given, he repeated the blow, the knife pierced the 
king's heart, and, without a word, Henry fell dead. 

. So mixed a character as that of Henry IV. is hardly recorded in 
history. As has been already mentioned, in his private life he 
was dissolute and licentious, even beyond the example of the most 
profligate of his predecessors, and lawless and tyrannical to all 
w^ho, however justified by considerations of family ties and family 
honour, threw the slightest obstacle in the way of his gratifica- 
tion. Yet, when not blinded by his passions, so gracious were hia 
manners, so frank and unassuming his aff'abilitj'-, so genuine his 
humanity and love for his subjects, that the affection with whicl 
the populace regarded him cannot be looked on as entirely mis- 
placed or undeserved. How well he merited the devotion of those 
with whom his intercourse was closer, is attested by his firm 
friendship for Sully : a minister too sincerely attached to his real 
interests ever to forbear expressing his real opinion, or to spare 
advice, remonstrance, or even reproof. Many of those by whom 



186 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1610. 

Henry was surrounded were eager enougli to get rid of one whose 
unswerving honesty was at once a reproach to their corruption 
and a hindrance to their rapacity ; and sought to excite his anger 
against his uncompromising freedom of speech. But, though him- 
self occasionally provoked with it for a moment, Henry himself 
was too honest to retain displeasure at conduct of which he knew 
the motive, and more than once, after a momentary quarrel, spon- 
taneously sought a reconciliation, bidding his faithful servant 
continue to speak to him with candour and boldness, since if ever 
he ceased to do so, he himself should then, but never till then, 
think that he had become indiiFerent to his true interests. 

If we seek to measure his abilities, we shall be forced, as we 
have already intimated, while admitting the brilliancy of his pei-- 
sonal courage, to deny him any high degree of skill as a general. 
But as a statesman and a ruler of men, we cannot refuse him our 
warm admiration. It is no moderate praise of his general views 
of both domestic and foreign policy, that the ambitious, bold, and 
sagacious Richelieu did not disdain to be his follower in them, but 
placed his own hope of renown in their successful prosecution. 
Nor, in the formation and execution of his designs, was his a one- 
sided ability : on the contrary, his intellect was not more com- 
prehensive in his projects than his judgment was shrewd and 
correct in the choice of the measures by which his objects were to 
be attained. He had great penetration and insight into the 
characters of men, both of the friends, allies, or servants on whose 
assistance he relied, and of those whose opposition or enmity he 
expected to encounter. Sully, too, speaks of him as eminently 
endowed with the talent for organisation, and with great origi- 
nality of mind and fertility of resource : and we may see a proof 
that this praise is not dictated by an unreasoning partiality in the 
circumstance that he was the first sovereign in Europe to establish 
that arrangement of a ministry which now prevails universally, 
and by which a distinct department of work is assigned to each 
member of the administration. To praise the humanity of a 
monarch on his toleration of religious dilFerences among his sub- 
jects would, at the present day, seem superfluous, if not imperti- 
nent ; but when Henry first came on the stage conquerors had not 
j'et learned to consider their glory as augmented by mercy to van- 
quished foes, while monarchs looked on religious intolerance as a 
duty rather than toleration. Henry was the first in any country 
to set the generous example of clemency to those who had stood 
against him in battle, and of indulgence to those who differed 
from his faith. As Protestant and Catholic he equally ab- 
horred persecution : and in these all-important matters he is 
clearly entitled to the high praise of having been in advance of his 



A.D. 1610.] CHARACTER OF HENRY. 187 

age. His weaknesses as a man (it may be doubted wliether that 
be not too mild an expression) may forbid us to acquiesce in the 
title of ' The Great/ which Sully's affection bestowed on him, 
even though sanctioned by the unanimous adoption of subsequent 
French historians ; but still we must not deny a very high place 
to the statesman and the king who, discerning the capabilities of 
his country, taught her a policy, which, before the end of the 
century, rendered her the leading kingdom of Europe : and who 
was not more solicitous for the power and glory of the nation 
than he was for the material prosperity of all classes of his 
subjects.^ 

* The authorities for this chapter are the same as these for Chapter YII, 




188 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1618. 



CHAPTEE IX. 

A.D. 1618 — 1648. 

IT was only in appearance that the peace of Passau had restored 
religious tranquillity to Germany. Its very terms had to some 
extent been calculated to keep alive the animosities between the 
two sects, and, even before the death of Charles V., events had 
occurred in which lay the seeds of a future outbreak. 

The Bohemians, a people whose attachment to the memory of 
John PIuss naturally disposed them to look on Luther's denuncia- 
tion of the doctrines and practices of Rome with favour, were also 
especially jealous of their national privileges as citizens of an inde- 
pendent kingdom. In the middle of the fifteenth century, though 
Bohemia was a fief of the Empire, all the influence of the Emperor 
could not induce them to accept him as their king. And when, in 
1526, on the death of Louis II., the last male heir of the former 
dynasty, on the fatal field of Mohacz, they ratified a former ar- 
rangement by which Charles's brother Ferdinand, whose wife was 
the fallen king's sister, succeeded to his throne, they compelled 
him to sign a deed by which he acknowledged that he owed his 
accession to no hereditary right of his own, but to the free and 
voluntary choice of the people. On the abdication of Charles, 
Ferdinand, who inherited his Austrian dominions, succeeded him 
also as Emperor : Bohemia, with the greater kingdom of Hungary, 
thus becoming annexed to Austria, and to the Empire. But this 
union only rendered the Bohemians more careful than ever to 
assert their national independence ; and more than once, before 
the end of the century, they extorted from Ferdinand's successors 
a recognition and confirmation of all their ancient privileges, and 
especially of their absolute and inalienable right to religious 
freedom. 

On this footing for some time afFair.s went on peaceably, and, 
as the subjects were content with the toleration which they en- 
joyed, so with prudence and humanity on the part of their rulers 
tranquillitv might easily have been maintained; but, in 1617, the 
Emperor Matthias, who had ]iimself shown a fiercer spirit, and one 



A.D. 1618.] FERDINAND, KING OF THE ROMANS. 189 

more inclined to persecution than any of his recent predecessors, 
being without either children or nephews to succeed him, pro- 
cured the election of his cousin Ferdinand, archduke of Styria, as 
King of the Romans. And those who were aware of the temper 
which that prince had already displayed in his native pi-ovince at 
once foreboded a violent interruption of the existing peace from 
his elevation : for he had been educated by the Jesuits, that 
fatal Order whose narrow principles and relentless bigotry had 
been the chief source of the evils which had flowed over the 
French and Spanish dominions, and from the moment when he 
succeeded to the government of his Duchj^, he had carried out 
their maxims of persecution to the utmost of his power. He had 
declared that he ' would rather beg his bread from door to door 
than suffer heresy to exist in the land ; ' and he had shown that 
this was no empty threat, by the demolition of all the Protestant 
churches, and the expulsion of all the Protestant inhabitants in 
Styria, though they amounted to two-thirds of his subjects. So 
general, indeed, were the dread and detestation which he had ex- 
cited, that a strong party both in the Empire and in Bohemia 
opposed his election, and it was not without the greatest personal 
exertions of Matthias that he was chosen ; nor without signing a 
formal and most stringent confirmation of all the privileges of the 
Bohemians, which, in express terms, absolved them from their 
allegiance in the event of his infringing any of their ancient 
rights. 

But, in spite of his signature, and in spite of the oath which he 
took at his coronation at Prague, and which bound him still more 
strongly to the observance of the Bohemian charters, he was not 
long before he justified the worst forebodings of his enemies. He 
began to work on the Emperor to revoke the different edicts and 
treaties under which the Protestants had hitherto enjoyed toleration. 
At his instigation, the Catholic clergy began to pull down the 
Protestant churches, and, when the congregations addressed a tem- 
perate remonstrance to the Lords of the Council, as the Imperial 
commissioners were called who sat at Prague to administer the 
affairs of the kingdom, the deputies who presented it were thrown 
into prison, and threatened with instant execution as traitors. 
Those whose spokesmen they had been were not of a temper to 
submit to such tyrannical and unconstitutional menace. That very 
night a meeting of the chief nobles of the kingdom resolved to 
obey no decree which was inconsistent with their charter, and 
which tended to endanger the Protestant religion. The next 
morning, clad in complete arnioui', and attended by a numerous 
assemblage of excited followers, they presented the resolution to 
the Lords; and when two members of the council, the Counts 



190 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1619. 

Slavata and Martinez, insulted them witli taunting and con- 
tiunelious language, they seized them and their secretary, who 
was believed to share their sentiments, and to have prompted 
their most violent actions, and, in accordance with what the 
crowd behind proclaimed to be an ancient mode of dealing with 
such tyrants in Bohemia, they threw them out of the window of 
the council chamber. To this day the window is shown, and the 
story told to the visitors of the Hradshin palace ; but, though the 
window is eighty feet from the ground, the fall was not fatal, as it 
was intended to be : a dunghill or some other heap of soft rub- 
bish had been accumulated beneath, on which they alighted with 
comparatively trifling injury, to stimulate by a complaint, which 
could hardly be pronounced ill-founded, the adoption of more 
severe measures against so intractable a people. 

It had been an unpremeditated act, but the Bohemian chiefs did 
not deceive themselves as to its probable consequences. It was, 
indeed, easy to foresee that it was likely to be regarded at Vienna 
as the commencement of a deliberate insurrection. And in this 
belief, while sending deputies to explain rather than to apologise 
for their deed, as one justified by the unconstitutional conduct of 
the Lords themselves, they at the same time stood on their de- 
fence, raised an army, and began to negotiate for aid with all the 
Protestant States. These anticipations were soon verified. Ferdi- 
nand easily persuaded Matthias, now rapidly sinking into the 
grave, to treat the outrage on his commissioners as treason ; 
under his influence the ministers at Vienna avowed their intention 
to find in war a pretext for abrogating all the Bohemian charters ; 
an army was sent into Bohemia, and once more the flames of civil 
war were kindled in the country. Still, had Matthias lived, they 
might have been extinguished almost as soon as they were 
lighted, for the bulk of the population on both sides was eager for 
peace ; and, after one or two operations of no great consequence, 
though the balance of success was in favour of the Bohemians, a 
Congress was appointed to meet at Egra, in April 1619, where, 
under the arbitration of two Catholic ^ and two Protestant electors, 
it was hoped that terms of permanent accommodation might be 
arranged. Unhappily, a month before the day fixed for the meet- 
ing of the Congress Matthias died, and Ferdinand succeeded 
to all his dominions and dignities, except that of Emperor. He at 
once broke ofl" the arrangements for the Congress; and, though 
Count Thurn, the fiercest of all the Bohemian leaders, was close to 
Vienna with one army, and though. Bethlehem Gabor, the warlike 

1 The Catholic electors were those the Protestant, the Duke of Saxony 
of Mentz, (Mayence), and Bavaria : and the Count Palatine. 



A.D. 1619.J FREDERIC ELECTED JvING OF BOHEMIA. 191 

Prince of Transylvania, in alliance svith him, was known to be not 
far distant witli another, Ferdinand believed that he had received 
divine assurance of such support in all his undertakings against 
the heretics as would carry him safely through the contest; and 
he had scarcel}' avowed his belief before a squadron of horse came 
to his aid, entering the city by a gate which Thurn's unskilfuluess 
had left unguarded. A day or two afterwards news arrived of an 
advantage gained by a force under General Bucquoi over a Bohemian 
division at Teyne, on the Moldau, which compelled Thurn to draw 
off to defend Prague, and, being thus delivered from immediate 
alarm, Ferdinand repaired to Frankfort, where, though not vdth- 
out encountering strenuous opposition, he at last succeeded in 
securing his election as the successor of Matthias on the Imperial 
throne. 

But, while he was thus absen t from his own dominions, the con- 
viction that he would obtain this dignity, and the apprehensions of 
the increase of power which he would derive from it, stimulated 
the Bohemians to a resolution to protect themselves by depriving 
him of any authority over them : a step that the terms in which he 
had confirmed their charter appeared to justify, since it was clear, 
in their eyes, that Bucquoi's attack upon the Bohemian troops was 
a violation of their national privileges. And, subsequently, at a 
Diet held at Prague on the nineteenth of August, they declared 
Ferdinand to have forfeited the throne, raised Frederic, the Elector 
Palatine, to the vacant dignity, and formed a confederacy with 
Moravia, Silesia, Lusatia, and the Protestants in Upper and Lower 
Austria, a numerous and powerful body, who willingly pledged 
themselves to support them in the defence of all their civil and 
religious privileges, and in the maintenance of their young king on 
the throne on which they had placed him. 

Ferdinand was not slow in taking up the gauntlet thus thrown 
down to him, and with the coronation of Frederic as King of 
Bohemia, which, at the beginning of November, was performed at 
Prague with unprecedented magnificence, the Thirty Years' War, 
to give it from the first the name by which ever since its conclusion 
it has been known, may be said to begin.^ It was a war fearful in 
its duration, though in that respect not unprecedented, for the civil 
wars in France, and that caused by the tyranny of Philip in the 
Netherlands, as we have seen, had lasted longer ; but it was fearful 
too in the extent to which it gradually drew every nation on the 
Continent into its vortex, and in that respect it was without example 
in the previous history of Europe. Yet perhaps the most extra- 

i In realitj' it lasted not thirty nated bj' the peace which was signed 
years, but twenty-nine, being termi- at Munster in September 1648. 



192 MODERN HISTORY. [a.b. 1620. 

ordinary feature which it presents is the circumstance that, despe- 
rate as the condition of the Protestants seemed at its commence- 
ment, at its conclusion they obtained nearly all the objects for 
■which they had entered upon it. That they did so was owing in 
no slight degree to the great prince whose achievements will form 
the principal subject of the present chapter. 

Never did a prince embark in a contest who was less endoAved 
with the qualities requisite to enable him to carry it to a successful 
end than Frederic ; and, in spite of the treaties which the Bohemians 
had concluded with other States, never had a prince less foreign aid 
on which to rely. He himself was amiable, and not destitute of 
those accomplishments which are attractive in times of peace ; but 
he was weak, vacillating, fond of ease and luxury, and utterly 
devoid of energy and resolution to achieve success, and of fortitude 
to bear reverses, or even perils ; while the adversary whom he de- 
fied, though narrow-minded, bigoted, and ferocious, was consistent 
in his objects, clear-sighted as to the means of attaining them, 
prompt and unscrupulous in council, vigorous in action, and un- 
daunted amid dangers. The support, too, on which Frederic 
might reasonably have reckoned, which, indeed, he might well 
have fancied he had a right to claim, in each more important 
instance failed him. He was married to the only daughter of 
the King of England ; but James looked on the conduct of the 
Bohemians as an act of revolt against their lawful sovereign the 
Emperor ; he was anxious, too, to gain the goodwill of the Emperor's 
kinsman, the King of Spain, in order to procure the hand of the 
Infanta for the Prince of Wales ; and on both grounds he refused 
his assistance to his son-in-law, though the British Parliament and 
the whole nation were enthusiastic in their desire to fight for 
their Princess's husband. Frederic had a still greater claim on the 
Protestant Union, as a confederacy was called which nearly a 
century^ before had been formed among several of the minor 
German States for mutual defence in all religious contests ; but 
there he was baffled by the unhfippj' divisions which, as has been 
already mentioned, at the very outset of the Reformation, had 
arisen among the Reformers themselves. He himself was a Cal- 
vinist; the chief members of the Union were Lutherans; and, 
availing himself of their antipathy to him on that account, the 
King of France, Louis XIIL, whose hatred of liberty of any kind 
disposed him to enter heartily into the cause of his Imperial brother, 
and who willingly undertook to exert his influence over them, 

' It was formed at Torgau, in Duke of Mecklenburgh, the Duke of 

1526, the original members being Brunswick, the Count of Mansfelt, 

the Elector Palatine, the Elector of and the free city of Magdeburg. 
Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, the 



A.D. 1620.] SPINOLA OVERRUNS THE PALATINATE. 1 93 

easily induced them to conclude a treaty with the Catholic League,* 
which practically detached them from Frederic's side, by limiting 
the assistance which they should give him to the protection of his 
hereditary territory, the Palatinate, in the event of its being 
attacked by the League, and left him defenceless against all other 
enemies ; while the League was debarred from no operation but the 
invasion of the Palatinate. 

Even had the two antagonists been equally without allies, the 
contest between the Empire and Bohemia would have been too 
unequal to last long. But Ferdinand was far from being as iso- 
lated as Frederic. The Spaniards joined him, and sent Spinola to 
overrun the Palatinate. The Elector of Saxony, though a Pro- 
testant, joined him : the Duke of Bavaria, a prince of great ability 
both as a soldier and statesman, joined him, and took the command 
of his army ; which on the eighth of November 1620, exactly a 
year after Frederic's coronation at Prague, terminated the war, as 
far as he was concerned, at a single blow. In a battle on an 
elevated spot, known as the White Mountain, near Prague, the 
duke routed the Bohemian army, commanded by Prince Christian 
of Anhalt, who was severely wounded and taken prisoner. Frederic, 
who had excused himself from being present, though his crown 
was at stake, on the discreditable but characteristic pretence of 
entertaining the English ambassador at a banquet, passing at once 
from confident indifference to despair, that very night abandoned 
his capital, though a strongly fortified and defensible city ; and 
fled to Berlin. Deserted by the king whom it had chosen, Prague 
surrendered ; and Ferdinand showed himself unworthy of his 
victory by the ferocious and indiscriminate cruelty of the revenge 
which he took on all his rival's partisans. On one single morning 
twenty-seven of the principal nobles of the kingdom were executed : 
by one single decree the property of 700 more was confiscated. 
The old charters of the liberties of Bohemia he tore with his own 
hands. One edict of persecution followed another : one banished 
all Protestant ministers and schoolmasters ; another prohibited 
any Protestant from inheriting or bequeathing property : finally, 
in 1626, sentence of banishment was pronounced, against all who 
belonged to any Protestant sect, and 30,000 families were driven 
from the kingdom. 

But if these sweeping severities were intended to produce 

• The Catholic Lragiie had bf en members. It is sometimes called the 

formed two yeaps before the Pro- League of Ratisbon, from having 

testant Union, which was indeed a been arranged in that city ; and its 

defensive measure to counteract it. avowed objects were the suppression 

The Archdulce Ferdinand, the duke of the new religion by any and everv 

of tlie Bavarias, and the Episcopal means. 
Electors being originally the cliief 
10 



194 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1623. 

tmiversal submife'sion, and to crusli the spirit of Protestantism in 
otlier States, they failed in their eifect ; they rather animated 
resistance, and taught these who resolved to resist the necessity of 
combining for their mutual protection. Unworthy of followers 
and friends as Frederic had shown himself all did not desert his 
cause when he himself abandoned it. Count Mansfeld, a general 
of great skill and courage, who, at the head of a small but well- 
trained force, had been hastening to unite his army to Prince 
Christian's just before the fatal battle of the White Mountain, on 
hearing of that defeat, fell back on the Palatinate, and defending 
every available post with imdaunted resolution and brilliant skill, 
held the province so long and so stoutly that at last Frederic him- 
self recovered some couiage: and joined him on the Rhine. It 
was but a transitory effort of resolution on his part, for he soon 
quitted the army, and returned to Holland : in the vain hope of 
pacifying the implacable Ferdinand, even treating his gallant 
adherents with the basest ingratitude, and forbidding them any 
longer to carry on the contest in his name. 

Spinola and the P>avarians were thus. left to complete the re- 
duction of the Palatinate without opposition. But Mansfeld's 
operations had gained time for other Protestant leaders to arm : 
and for the courts of England and Franco to change their policy. 
Richelieu, who had begun to acquire that authority in the French 
government, which he exercised during all the latter years oi 
Louis's reign, had from the first adopted in its fullest extent the 
policy of Henry IV., which looked to the depression of the House 
of Austria. The plan of a marriage between the Prince of Wales 
and the Spanish Infanta having been abandoned, James, who wag 
now eager to obtain the hand of a French princess for his son, 
sought to secure the friendship of the great cardinal by co-opera- 
tion with him in his measures of continental policy : and with 
this object sent supplies of money to the German Protestants, and 
encouraged the formation of volunteer corps among his subjects to 
serve in tlie armies : while Richelieu aided them more secretl}^, 
but with little less effect, by encouraging all those States which 
still hesitated to ajlopt a decided line of resistance to the Emperor, 
whose proceedings showed a desire to make himself absolute 
master of all Germany. 

Thus animated and supplied armies rose up rapidly. A fresh 
league was formed, in the north of Germany, of which King Chris- 
tian of Denmark, brother of James's queen, was tlie head : in a 
short time he found himself at the head of 60,000 men : a force 
against which the Imperial general, the Bavarian Count Tilly, 
though a commander of the greatest capacity, was quite unable 
to make head : while Bethlehem Gabor was once more be- 



A.D. 1626.] RISE OF WALLESTEIN. 195 

coining dangerous in tlie south, threatening to revive the contest 
in some of the districts which had been subdued, or, as Ferdinand 
called" it, pacified, if not to attack Vienna itself. Ferdinand was 
in great perplexity. The Austrian treasury, never rich, was ex- 
hausted by the eiforts necessary to sustain so protracted a contest: 
nor was he entirely pleased at having been compelled to entrust 
all his military operations to foreigners : for neither Spinola, nor 
the Duke of Bavaria, nor Tilly owned any allegiance to him : 
and he was disinclined, if not afraid, to adopt any measures which 
might increase his dependence on them. Others were aware of 
his embarrassment : and one who had been carefully watching the 
progress of affairs, now came to his aid with a proposal which, 
though for a moment it seemed to extricate him from his diffi- 
culties, eventually may be almost said to have given him a master 
from among his own subjects. 

Among those who had distinguished themselves in the first opera- 
tions of the war was Albert, baron of Wallestein ; who, even 
before the death of Matthias, had acquired some distinction in a 
campaign against the Venetians ; and afterwards, at the head of 
a body of Moravian militia, had borne an important share in the 
victory of Teyne, which in reality had given the Imperial cro^yn 
to Ferdinand, and afterwards in that of the White Mountain. So 
valuable were the services which, in the subsequent transactions 
he was able to render to the Emperor that, in 1623, he was raised 
to the Dukedom of Friedland ; and having acquired extensive 
popularity among all classes by his liberality to his soldiers when 
in military command, and by the freedom and administrative 
talent which he had displayed in the management of the affairs of 
his new duch}', he now proposed to Ferdinand to levy 50,000 men 
for his service, whom he himself would equip and pay, on condition 
of being allowed to appoint all the officers, and to have uncon- 
trolled and undivided authority over the whole force. His offer 
was accepted ,• though a less jealous and suspicious prince than 
Ferdinand might well have hesitated thus to make a subject whose 
very proposal proved the aspiring character of his ambition, inde- 
pendent of him in so important a matter as the command of an 
army, but the Emperor's necessities left him no alternative : and 
Wallestein acted up to his undertaking with promptitude and 
good faith. By the beginning of 1626 he had raised a force 
powerful enough to defeat Mausfeld on the Elbe : pursuing him 
into Hungary, he compelled Bethlehem Gabor, who was once 
more marching through that country against Vienna, to abandon 
his design. The next year he turned again to the north : overran 
Jutland, drove, the King of Denmark across the Baltic to his 



196 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1628. 

islands : and began to form plans for crossing that sea, and tliu8 
making himself master of Copenhagen itself. 

But the measures which he took to accomplish that part of his 
designs brought a new combatant into the field, in whom for the 
first time he was to find a superior. He laid siege to Stralsund, 
an important seaport on the coast of Pomerania, with a force that 
seemed sufficient to defy all resistance ; for he had 20,000 men 
beneath its walls, and, in the vehemence of his resolution to 
possess himself of a place which would give him such a hold on 
the Baltic, vowed that he would take it ' even if it were fastened 
to heaven by chains of adamant.' And the citizens, confessing 
their inability to cope with so formidable a host, implored the aid 
of Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden. Gustavus was younger 
than Wallestein by more than ten years ; but his whole life since 
his arrival at man's estate had been spent in war, in the art of 
which he had shown himself a master, equally skilful in the con- 
duct of sieges and in battles in the open field. He had lost no 
battle ; he had failed to take no place which he had attacked : 
and in a recent war with Denmark he had reduced Riga, the 
strongest city in the north of Europe by tactics which were not 
only so skilful but so novel, that Spinola warned the Emperor that, 
if he allowed him to be brought into the war, he would have to 
deal with an antagonist of a wholly different stamp from those 
whom his generals had hitherto encountered. Gustavus was a 
zealous Protestant; it was not without anxiety and concern that 
he had witnessed the progress that the Emperor was making in 
the subjugation of his brethren in religion : and he saw with joy 
the opportunity of checking that progress in the request of Stral- 
sund for aid. He gladly and promptly sent them a reinforcement, 
under the command of a Scotch officer, who afterwards rose to 
eminence in his own country, David Leslie : and his aid, and that 
of a Danish fleet, enabled the citizens to prolong the defence till 
the wet weather came on, and Wallestein, greatly to his indigna- 
tion, was compelled to raise the siege. 

The disappointment only exasperated Ferdinand ; though he 
comforted himself by thinking revenge was in his power. In spite 
of the failure of his army before Stralsund, the year 1628 had been 
very fatal to his enemies. Illness had cai-ried off Bethlehem Gabor, 
and Mansfeld, and Christian of Brunswick ; all the leaders on 
whom the German Protestants had hitherto relied : and it seemed 
to him that if he could deprive them of their Baltic allies, he 
should have them at his mercy. Accordingly, he made peace with 
Denmark at Lubeck. He reckoned on Sigismund of Poland, with 
■whom the Swedes had long been at war, giving" Gustavus too 
much occupation to allow him to interfere in the domestic affairs 



A.i>. 1630.] THE EDICT OF EESTITUTION. 197 

of Germany : and in tLis confidence he proceeded to acts of 
greater rigour and oppression than ever against both Lutherans 
and Calvinists. Since the Diet of Augsburg much ecclesiastical 
property had been secularised, much had been transferred to the 
Protestant Church. He now published an Edict of Restitution, 
•which commanded the instant restoration of every estate to the 
Catholic hierarchy: and poured his troops into the Protestant 
provinces to compel instant obedience to the edict. The officers 
in command took a wanton pleasure in aggravating the execution 
of their orders by every kind of insult. Even in churches which 
had never belonged to the Catholics the bells were torn down, the 
altars and pulpits were destroyed, the Bibles were burned; while 
gibbets were erected to terrify, or, in case of need, to punish all 
who should venture to resist. In Bohemia the Emperor's zeal 
against the Protestants to some extent involved even the Catholics 
in their punishment, for another edict banished every Protestant 
woman, even if she had married a Catholic : though this order 
awakened such a spirit of indignation among the Catholics, that it 
was found impossible to enforce it. Enough, however, was done 
to show that nothing less than the entire extermination of the 
Protestant religion in Germany was resolved on. And the German 
Protestants, in consequence, turned their eyes to the only man who 
seemed able to cope with the Imperial generals. Gustavus had 
shown at Stralsund that he was able to baffle even Wallestein: 
and to him, therefore, as the citizens of Stralsimd had done before, 
the whole body of the Protestants of the Empire now appealed for 
protection. 

But they had no longer Wallestein to deal with. Richelieu, 
whose promptitude and energy in carrying out his designs fully 
equalled his acuteness and vigour in forming them, in his resolu- 
tion to prevent the further aggrandisement of the Emperor, not 
only detached his allies from him, but contrived to make him 
disarm himself. He employed one who, though by profession a 
Capuchin friar, was unsurpassed for diplomatic address by no 
statesman of the age, Father Joseph, to negotiate both with Sigis- 
muud of Poland and with Ferdinand himself. To both he 
appeared as a friend ; and in that character he mediated between 
Sigisraund and Gustavus, and induced them to conclude a peace, 
which necessarily left Gustavus, as it was intended to leave him, 
at leisure to direct his undivided exertions to the pi'otection of his 
new suppliants : in that character again, with subtler artifice, 
he instilled into Ferdinand's jealous mind suspicions of his great 
general (whose ambition was indeed sufficiently evident, and who, 
though a rigorous disciplinarian, was known to have so endeared 
himself to his troops by his liberality, that it was probable that 



198 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d, 1630. 

lie had the power, provided that he had the will, to become 
dangerous to his master). Under the 'influence of the crafty 
Capuchin, the Emperor sent him an order of dismissal, though he 
was not without some uneasiness at the reception which might be 
given to his message. Wallestein, however, was a believer in 
astrology. When Gustavus first opposed him at Stralsund, he 
had been careful to procure the king's horoscope, that his know- 
ledge of the planetary warnings might guide or aid his military 
calculations. He had now again consulted the stars, which had 
told him that the spirit of Ferdinand was at that moment domi- 
nated by hostile influences ; and to the stars he felt bound to 
submit. Though he had 100,000 men under his command, he 
at once obeyed, and submissively returned to his estates, content- 
edly occupying himself with their management and improvement 
till the time should come when the heavenly bodies should permit 
the Emperor once more to have recourse to his services. 

Ferdinand himself had repented of the act almost as soon as he 
had committed it. The arguments of Father Joseph had been 
aided in his mind by the belief tliat the Electors of the Empire, 
both Catholics and Protestants, equally feared and hated WaUe- 
stein, who treated them all with contemptuous arrogance, and who 
was known to have expressed a wish for the abolition of the 
Electoral College, and the establishment of the Emperor in 
absolute and hereditary authority. And he had hoped that his 
dismissal would so conciliate them as to lead them to confer the 
dignity of King of the Romans on his son ; but he found that it had 
only emboldened them to disregard his wishes ; and he complained 
bitterly that ' a worthless friar had disarmed him with his rosary, 
and had put six electoral caps under his own cowl.' 

The increasing discontent of the Geraian princes, and the grow- 
ing confidence in their power of resistance to their tyrant, did not 
escape Gustavus ; and, as he formerly had listened to the prayers 
of the people of Stralsund, he now prepared to give assistance on 
a larger scale to the whole of the Protestant party, Sweden, 
indeed, was neither a wealthy nor a populous country ; and the 
entire force which he could employ did not exceed 27,000 men ; 
but he was something more than a general, he was a great military 
reformer, and he had introduced into the Swedish army a new 
system of organisation and tactics. He was the first of modern 
soldiers to perceive that activity and rapidity of movement are in 
themselves strength alike in an individual and in an army. And, 
acting on this principle, he had broken up the massive immoveable 
phalanx of old times into smaller and more manageable battalions ; 
he had reduced the weight of their weapons, and had taught the dif- 
ferent divisions, the pikemen, the musketeers, the cavalry, and the 



A.D. 1630.1 GUSTAVUS INVADES GERxMANY. 199 

artillery, the duty and the art of giving each other mutual support. 
And his Polish campaigns had already proved to him that men 
so trained were a match for far greater numbers arrayed in the 
old fashion. It was, therefore, with almost as full confidence in 
his eventual success as in the righteousness of his cause, which, 
as he told the Swedish Estates ^ in his parting speech to them, 
was that of civil and religious freedom throughout the world, that 
he crossed the Baltic. It was looked upon as a happy omen that 
the day on which he landed in the little peninsula of Usedom was the 
twenty-fourth of June, the day on which, 100 years before, the Con- 
fession of Augsburg had been presented to Charles the Fifth ; and it 
was characteristic of the spirit in which he had undertaken the en- 
terprise that his first act on German ground was to throw himself 
on his knees, thanking God for the protection which he had thus 
far granted to his expedition ; and his second, to admonish some 
of his oiRcers, whom he observed to comment somewhat derisively 
on his devotion, that 'a good Christian could not be a bad soldier,' 
and that, ' the man who had prayed to his God had already com- 
pleted the most important half of his day's work.' Nor was 
his religion confined to words ; it showed itself in the discipline 
which he enforced upon his men, as also in the cheerfulness with 
which they submitted to his rules. Wallestein had been far more 
merciful and humane in his hours of victory than any other of the 
Imperial generals ; but even he had felt compelled to connive at 
acts of rapacity and licentiousness on the part of his soldiers, who 
looked on the practice of such crimes as a legitimate part of the 
recompense due to them for the toils of a campaign. But in the 
Swedish camp the strictness of military discipline was not counter- 
balanced b}'^ any relaxation of the laws which prevailed in timea 
of peace ; justice did not for a moment shut her eyes to crime nor 
even to disorder ; every act of rapine or violence was inexorably 
punished ; and the natives of the provinces in which the Swedish 
battalions encamped or fought could hail their victories without 
finding them almost as disastrous to themselves as the triumphs of 
their enemies. 

When Ferdinand removed Wallestein from his command, he did 
not leave himself without generals who thought themselves, and 
whom he had reason to think, a match for any antagonist, even 
Gustavus himself, if he should venture into the field. His 
general in Pomerania was Torquatu Conti, who had gained con- 
siderable distinction in the recent campaigns in Piedmont; and 
who openly boasted that his troops were such as Gustavus had 
never met, and that they would soon make the Swedish laurels 

1 The Estates was the name given in most of those countries to the 
Senate or Parliament. 



200 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1631. 

•wither. Ilis commander-in-cliief was the Bavarian Count Tilly, 
a veteran from whose vigour and energy seventy-two years had 
taken but little : he had won six-and-thirty battles without once 
suffering a defeat, and he was not the less formidable because he 
appreciated the character and talents of his antagonist. The 
Viennese courtiers made themselves merry at the expense of 
Gustavus's ice-bound country, calling him ' a King of Snow, who 
would melt away under the influence of a southern sun.' But Tilly 
was too experienced a warrior, and judge of warriors, to share their 
presumption ; he warned his master that he had now a far more 
formidable enemy to deal with than any who had as yet been 
encountered ; that Gustavus ' was a gamester, in playing with 
whom not to lose would be to win a great deal.' Conti was the 
first to encounter him ; and soon learnt that Tilly's estimate of 
him was the more correct ; Gustavus baffled him in an attempt 
upon Stettin ; took Colbergon, a place of great importance, as 
being the storehouse of all the plunder which the Imperial armies 
had collected during the last two years, before his face ; and re- 
j-ected his proposals for a suspension of arms during the winter, 
drove him from place to place, till in, disgust and despair, he re- 
signed his command. 

Nor did Tilly, though far more cautious and skilful, meet with 
better fortune. Gustavus opened the next year by concluding a 
formal treaty with France, which supplied him with what he 
needed most, money ; since, as in the league between France and 
England in the time of Henry IV. France again was to furnish 
subsidies, while Gustavus was to supply the men. He engaged to 
keep on foot an army of 35,000 men ; and he fulfilled bis part of the 
compact with great completeness. In the course of the winter of 
1630 and the succeeding spring he is said to have taken no fewer 
than eighty towns and fortresses ; crowning his successes of this 
kind by the capture of the important city of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, 
though Tilly had entrusted its defence to one of his ablest officers 
and to a picked garrison of 8,000 soldiers ; and, twelve days after- 
wards, of Landsperg, a fortress whose position made it almost 
equally valuable, Ij'ing as it did on the borders of Poland and 
Prussia, and threatening his communications so long as it re- 
mained in the hands of the enemy. Tilly himself felt that the 
capture of New Brandenburgh was no compensation for this series 
of losses ; for Gustavus had never designed to defend that town 
at all ; and it would not have contained a single trooper, had not 
the fierce old Bavarian intercepted the despatches in which the 
king had ordered the governor to withdraw his garrison ; Tilly 
stormed the place, put the garrison to the sword, and gave up the 
peaceful citizens to the mercy of his soldiei's. But to efface, iii 



A.D. 1631.] THE SACK OF JVIAGDEBURG. 201 

some degree, the impression made by the king's uninterrupted 
triumphs, Tilly moved down the Elbe, and taking under his com- 
mand a body of troops commanded by Count Pappenheim, an 
officer second in reputation to none but himself, laid siege to the 
wealthy city of Magdeburg. The name means the Virgin town, 
and it bore for its arms a crowned damsel, who in the times of the 
pagans who had founded it, represented Venus the titular deity of 
the place, till Charlemagne converted the Saxons to Christianity, 
and the Goddess of Cyprus into the Virgin Mary. It was cele- 
brated for its riches, but was too large for its own safety, for its walls 
were too extensive to have been ever thoroughly fortified ; and the 
garrison, which scarcely exceeded 2,000 men, was quite inadequate 
to man the fortifications which existed. Moreover, the citizens 
were not all Protestants ; and the Catholics favoured the projects 
of the besiegers. Gustavus, on hearing of its danger prepared at 
once to hasten to its defence ; but his road lay through Branden- 
burgh and Saxony, and while he was negotiating with the electors 
of those provinces for leave to pass through their tenitories, 
Pappenheim stormed the city sword in hand, and he and Tilly 
sullied their victory by a savage cruelty to which no other incident 
of these wars, fertile in atrocities ps they had been, alForded a 
parallel. Schiller has spoken of the occurrences which ensued as 
'a scene of horror, for which history has no language, poetry no 
pencil.' Schiller himself was a poet, not unskilled in painting deeds 
of blackness and of crime, and what he felt unequal to describe, 
others may well be excused from dwelling on, even if to detail the 
deeds of that day were not needlessly to shock every feeling of 
humanity. City and citizens were given up to the fury of the 
soldiery, stimulated to more than their natural ferocity by the 
knowledge that their generals were applauding them. After suf- 
fering insults and outrages worse than death, garrison and citizens 
were all butchered, with the exception of about 400 of the wealthiest 
nobles or merchants, who were able to promise a ransom which the 
monsters in whose power they were preferred to their blood. 
Two churches and a few houses alone remained unconsumed by 
the fire which destroyed the rest of the town. The conquerors 
could boast with truth, as they did boast, that since the wrath of 
God had descended on Jerusalem, no such utter destruction had 
destroyed both citizens and city, 

Gustavus had been unable to save Magdeburg, but he avenged 
it. The annalists of the day remarked that God himself avenged 
it ; and that neither Tilly nor Pappenheim, who had previously 
enjoyed careers of unbroken success, ever gained an advantage in 
the field from that day. The news of Magdeburg's fall had hardly 
reached him, when he was joined by a splendid division of British 



202 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1631. 

troops, under the Marquis of Hamilton, and by another reinforce- 
ment which his queen brought in person to swell his ranks. With 
numbers now fully equal to Tilly's he pursued that general into 
Saxony ; and, after having gained repeated advantages over him in 
manoeuvres and petty skirmishes, on the seventh of September 
brought him to action under the walls of Leipzig, of which, as it 
was defenceless, he had made himself master two days before. 

The battle of Leipzig, or Breitenfeldt as it is also called, was the 
turning point of the war. Both Gustavus and Tilly felt that it was 
not only to decide their respective pretensions to superiority of skill, 
but that it was also to determine the Protestant States in the course 
which they would adopt for the future. If Gustavus were beaten, 
nothing would remain for them but to make their submission on 
whatever terms the Emperor might choose to dictate. If vic- 
tory should declare for him, not only those who took part with 
him would feel good hope of eventual triumph, but many who as 
yet were standing aloof, watching the course of events, would 
throw in their lot with those who, in fighting for their own re- 
ligious freedom, were at the same time champions of the civil 
liberty of all. The opposing armies were not unworthy of so 
momentous a contest ; they were, as nearly as possible, equal in 
numbers, each consisting of about 35,000 men; and, as Tilly mar- 
shalled his forces according to the old method or want of method, 
and Gustavus his on the plan on which he had for some time been 
training them, the battle was a fair trial of the two systems, and 
a test of the value of his new tactics. Tilly's main body consisted 
of a dense mass of pikemen, covered in front by lines of musketeers, 
each force in appearance supporting, but, in fact, hindering the 
other. "When Gustavus charged the whole division with his 
cavalry, the pikemen could give no aid to the nausketeers, who 
were cut down helplessly; when the musketeers had been dis- 
posed of, the attacking cavalry fell back and a body of Swedish 
musketeers mowed the pikemen down, without their pikes being 
of the slightest service. In other parts of the field the conflict was 
more stubborn. There Pappenheim charged Hamilton's infantry 
with his cuirassiers; but Gustavus had supported them with 
cavalry, and after a fierce struggle the united battalions drove 
back the cuirassiers, and pursued them to the small hamlet of 
Podelwitz which was near the centre of the Imperial line, and the 
key of Tilly's position. Pappenheim, undaunted and fertile in ex- 
pedients, set fire to the hamlet, and having thus checked the ad- 
vance of his pursuers, turned upon them and again charged them 
with the most brilliant vigour; but their commander at once 
deployed them into line, and the British infantry, giving perhaps 
on this occasion the first example of their immovable steadiness 



A.D. 1631.1 BATTLE OF BREITENFELDT. 203 

in such a formation, repelled onset after onset, till at last the 
cuirassiers retreated in disorder, with difficulty, bearing off Pap- 
penheini himself who was desperately, though, as it proved, not 
mortally wounded. In the centre, Tilly in person led on his men, 
with such impetuosity that he broke a Saxon brigade in his front, 
the Elector himself setting the example of flight. Tilly thought 
the battle won, and sent off couriers to Munich and Vienna to 
announce the victory; at the same time exertiug himself to secure 
it by directing a vehement attack on the main body of the Swedish 
infantry, whom the rout of the Saxons had uncovered ; but one of 
Gustavus's best officers. Marshal Home, promptly brought up some 
battalions from the reserve to support their comrades ; and on the 
infantry thus strengthened no efforts of the Bavarians could make 
impression ; still at that point the struggle was obstinate, and for 
some time doubtful; till Gastavus, seeing what was taking place, 
brought up some squadrons of heavy cavalry to turn the balance ; 
charged the Bavarian artillery ; took several guns and turned them 
upon Tilly's brigades, which, being equally matched before, were 
now overpowered by the new and imexpected attack from their 
own batteries. Tillj', showing himself a great soldier even in his 
misfortunes, tried to make one last stand with his reserve, but 
could do no more than gain time for his broken regiments to rally 
so far as to retreat in tolerable order to a wood in the rear of his 
position, where night protected them from pursuit. The victory 
was complete ; the Imperialists had lost 7,000 killed and wounded ; 
with 3,000 prisoners, 30 guns,100 standards, and all their baggage ; 
while in Gustavus's army, the Swedes and British, on whom the 
brunt of the day had fallen, were not weakened by a loss of more 
them 700 men ; the chief slaughter having fiillen on the Saxons, 
whose misconduct had so nearly lost the battle ; and of whom 
almost 2,000 were cut down in their precipitate flight. 

The victory was soon shown by its fruits to have been as im- 
portant as it had been glorious. Many of the smaller princes, who 
had hitherto been afraid to declare themselves, now ranged them- 
selves on the king's side, and brought him reinforcements; and, as 
he marched towards the upper Bhine, many a town and fortress 
opened its gates to welcome him ; and by the end of the year he 
had reached the great river almost unresisted. Tilly would 
willingly have fought auother battle, in the hope of retrieving his 
credit, and saving the important city of Wurzburg ; but the 
Emperor's express orders forbad an attempt in which failure 
might have imperilled Vienna itself; and the only commander 
who endeavoured to arrest the conqueror's triumphant march was 
the Duke of Lorraine, who, though with numbers very inferior to 
his, did indeed venture on an action ; but was easily routed, being 



V 



204 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1632. 

indeed himself one of the first to flee from the field. The very 
peasantry "who. a few months before had never heard of Gustavus, 
now hailed his approach with enthusiasm ; and were loud in his 
praise, in and out of season. ' Ride faster, sir,' said one village 
clown to the flying duke, and as he spoke he gave his charger a blow 
to quicken his speed, ' You must make more haste than tha.t, if you 
mean to escape from the great King of Sweden.' 

Again, as in the previous year, disregarding the severity of 
Tvinter, in the first weeks of the year Gustavus forced the passage 
of the Rhine, took Mayence and several other cities ; compelled 
the Elector of Treves to renounce his alliance with the Emperor ; 
then, recrossing the Rhine towards the Upper Palatinate, he cap- 
tured Nuremburg and Donawerth ; and having thus reached a 
district which Tilly was occupying in force, pursued him up the 
Lech till he reached a spot near the little town of.Raine, where 
the resolute Bavarian had taken up a strong position behind the 
river, the bridges of which he had broken down ; and where he 
had fortified a camp in the confidence that be could prevent the 
king's further advance, and perhaps detain him there till some 
other army might come up and cut off" his retreat. But Gustavus, 
reconnoitring his position in person, discovered that his own bank 
of the Lech was higher than the other ; and availed himself of 
this circumstance to plant a heavy battery to bear on the camp, 
under the fire of which he threw a bridge across the stream, over 
which he at once passed his infantry, while his cavalry crossed by 
a ford which his scouts had discovered at no great distance. A 
sharp action ensued, but Tilly was mortally wounded by one of 
the first shots fired ; and the Bavarian army was forced to retreat 
towards the Danube, while Gustavus, passing up the Lech, reaped 
the fruits of his victory by the capture of Augsburg; and a few 
weeks afterwards by that of Munich itself. 

In this uninterrupted success of his enemy, it was probably not 
the least painful circamstance to Ferdinand that it compelled him 
to humble himself before the great general whom he had treated 
so unworthily. But he could not disguise from himself that no 
one but Wallestein could cope with the King of Sweden ; and 
when he found that the haughty duke would not discuss the state 
of affairs with his ministers, he wrote to him with his own hand, 
imploring him to forget wliat had passed, and not to forsake him in 
his hour of adversity'. Wallestein was vsilling to treat, or rather to 
dictate the terms on which he would consent to return to what it 
would be wrong to call his service. The conditions which he 
demanded amounted to an entire transference of all control over 
the army from the Emperor to himself. His command was to be 
single, and unlimited. The Emperor was not to approach the 



A.D. 1632.] WALLESTEIN EKSUMES THE COMMAND. 205 

army, with whicli be was to have nothiDg to do but to pay it ; waa 
to bave no power to grant commissions, to confer honours or re- 
wards ; even the conquests and acquisitions which might be made 
were to be at the disposal of the general ; for whose pay an Im- 
perial hereditary estate was to be assigned ; and his command was 
not to be abrogated without formal and timely notice. 

Enormous as these demands were, the first results of their 
concession seemed to justify it. Wallestein's name was indeed a 
tower of strength. The moment that his appointment to the 
chief command was known, men of all ranks hastened to join his 
standard. Tilly had fallen on the nintli of April. On the fourth 
of May, Wallestein, at the head of 40,000 men, drove a Swedish 
garrison out of Prague, the recapture of which had been one of 
the first-fruits of Breitenfeldt ; in a few weeks he recovered the 
whole of Bohemia, effected a juncture with the Duke of Bavaria, 
wlio had taken the command of the relics of Tilly's army, and, 
now at the head of 60,000 men, marched upon Nuremburg which 
were the head-quarters of Gustavus, in the not ill-founded hope 
of at once crushing him with his superior numbers, for he was 
well aware that the king had left detachments in Mimich and 
other cities and provinces, and had scarcely 20,000 men around his 
standard. But Gustavus, who was not ignorant of his strength, 
had anticipated his designs ; he had fortified not a camp, but 
Nuremburg itself with fosses, bastions, redoubts, and all other 
means of resistance known to the engineers of that age, and when 
Wallestein came in sight of the city, though he was scarcely a 
fortnight later than the king himself, he found the defences 
bristling with 300 guns, and, as he was compelled to confess, in 
his judgment, impregnable. 

The two great commanders were now for the first time con- 
fronted together ; and for nearly three months the campaign was 
a trial of skill between them in which Wallestein's superiority in 
numbers did not always secure him the advantage. He took up a 
position in the neighbourhood of the city calculated, as he con- 
sidered, to enable him to cut off the king's supplies, and so starve 
him if he remained in it, or to fall upon him with assurance of 
success if he endeavoured to quit it. But Gustavus supplied him- 
self by seizing a large magazine of provisions which at a short 
distance had been accumulated for the supply of the Imperialists 
themselves ; and, though he did not escape some retaliation, on the 
whole, the advantage in these operations was on his side. Mean- 
while he was active in calling in his detachments. By the middle 
of August he had raised his force to 40,000 men. And as different 
causes had reduced the Imperial army to the same strength, he 
selected St. Bartholomew's Day as one which the atrocities of 



206 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1632. 

Charles IX. liad made of evil omen for all adherents of the Pope, 
and on that morning he made a furious attack on Wallestein's 
entrenchments. But it requires superioritj' of numbers success- 
fully to attack a well fortified position ; and he was repulsed, with 
heavy loss ; and, as it was impossible for him to feed his army 
any longer in a now exhausted district, he, in the first week of 
September, quitted Nuremburg ; and, marching slowly, as if in 
defiance, along the front of the Imperial camp, retreated north- 
wards towards Saxonj'. 

Had the question of peace or war, as well as the conduct of the 
war been left to Wallestein, it is probable that this campaign 
might have terminated the quarrel. For Gustavus was at all 
times desirous of peace, provided it could be made compatible with 
the safety and religious freedom of his brother Protestants in 
Germany ; and Wallestein, though full of confidence in his 
military genius, was at all times cautious and prudent ; moreover, 
though in some points superstitious, he was far from bigoted, and 
was too large minded not to appreciate the principles of toleration, 
and to be willing to recommend the concessions which the king re- 
quired. Before he quitted Nuremburg, Gustavus had released an 
officer high in his confidence who had fallen into his hands, that 
he might be the bearer of formal proposals of peace ; and Walle- 
stein at once forwarded them to Vienna ; but, while the Emperor 
and his ministers were discussing them, the intelligence of the 
failure of the attack on Wallestein's camp filled them with such 
elation that they looked upon the king as hopelessly entangled in 
his toils, and, in this belief, returned an answer so arrogant as to 
destroy all hope of accommodation. 

Gustavus, therefore, retraced his steps towards Saxony ; whither 
Wallestein followed him, hoping by ravaging the Saxon plains to 
detach the elector from his alliance : and, in the first week in 
November, the two armies were once more in the same district. 
Wallestein had nearly 40,000 men: Gustavus little more than 
20,000, but, according to his usual practice, he had fortified his 
camp with a skill that compensated for his inferiority in numbers ; 
with such laborious art indeed, that his antagonist conceived that 
he designed to make the camp his winter quarters, and under that 
idea detached Pappenheira and some of his other officers on separ- 
ate enterprises. On the fifth of November an intercepted despatch 
revealed to the king this division of his eneniy's force ; and in- 
formed him that Wallestein himself was moving towards Lutzen. 
He took instant steps to surprise and crush him while thus 
weakened : directing his whole army also upon Lutzen, but the 
badness of the roads delayed his march : a river too, lay in his 
line of advance, which he was not permitted to cross without a 



A.B. 1632.] THE BATTLE OF LUTZEN. 207 

smart action with one of Wallestein's outposts : so that it was 
evening before he came in sight of his main body, and by that time 
Wallestein had had warning of his danger, and had sent couriers 
to recall Pappenheim, and other generals, if possible, to his support. 
All night the divisions came pouring in, each, as it arrived, taking 
up the ground which he had already assigned it for the morrow's 
combat. His heavy infantry he arranged, still adhering to the old 
tactics, in large square battalions, interspersing them, however, 
with bodies of light troops. The cavalry under Pappenheim 
formed his left wing ; a heavy battery, planted on a slight emi- 
nence crowned by a windmill, strengthened his right. Gustavus 
marshalled his men, as at Breitenfeldt, the infantry in two lines, 
the hindmost of which was kept in reserve : the cavalry on the 
flanks being also in two lines ; and his guns, rather more numerous 
than those of the Imperialists, were distributed all along his 
position. 

When the morning came and he learned what reinforcements had 
joined Wallestein during the night, he perceived that he had so 
far missed his blow that he was inferior in numbers : but in cavalry 
and artillery he was still the stronger, and conGding in the advan- 
tage which this gave him, he resolved to attack. He would have 
wished to begin the battle as soon as it was daylight, before those 
of the Imperialist troops, who had marched all night, had fully 
rested ; but a heavy fog overspread the plain ; and it was almost 
noon before it cleared away : then, mounting a white charger of 
conspicuous beauty, that he might be visible to all his army, and 
uttering aloud a brief prayer, ' Aid us. Lord Jesus, for thy Holy 
Name are we about to tight,' he, in person, led on his first line 
to the charge. The tale of hard-fought battles has been often told, 
and presents but little variety. The Imperialists set fire to Lutzen, 
to prevent their flank being turned in that direction : but such 
manoeuvres formed no part of Gustavus's plan on this occasion. 
He pressed straight forward. Animated by his example, the 
Swedes followed with such flery impetuosity that they broke the 
square opposed to them ; but Wallestein was as energetic as him- 
self, though he was suftering under a severe attack of gout, he 
forgot his own pains, and by his personal exertions rallied his men ; 
and continued the fight, while the king, hearing that Duke Ber- 
nard of Saxe- Weimar, his second in command, had been les? 
successful on the other wing, hastened to his support : encouraged 
by his presence, the Weimar division rallied, and beat back the 
opposing squadrons : and all seemed going well, when an Im- 
perialist trooper, conjecturing, from the manner in which all made 
way for Gustavus as he galloped along, that he must be a person 
of consequence, fired at him with fatal aim. Gustavus wore no 



208 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1632. 

armour ; one shot broke his arm, a second more fatal pierced hia 
breast ; ^ he fell dying to the ground : while his horse, galloping 
along the line, by the empty saddle proclaimed his loss to the 
army, Duke Bernard at once took the command, and led on the 
whole line for another charge. Fightino- to avengre their kiner, 
the Swedes, formidable before, were now irresistible. In vain did 
Pappenheim collect the freshest of his horsemen, and try to give 
the broken battalions time to rally. He too fell mortally wounded. 
In vain did Wallestein himself fight as if he courted death, hasten- 
ing wherever the enemy's ranks were thickest and fiercest, and the 
battle hottest. A cannon shot tore away a spur from his heel, a 
musket ball lodged in his thickly quilted buff coat: he seemed to 
bear a charmed life ; but his utmost exertions could do no more 
than delay his defeat. At last under the repeated charges of the 
Swedes, his men gave way in every direction : his artillery was 
taken, and nothing remained for him bu\. to retreat. The amount 
of killed in either army is not known ; and the Swedes were too 
much exhausted by their conflict with a superior force to make 
any prisoners : but they captured all Wallestein's guns and 
baggage ; and the Imperialist armj' was so completely disorganised 
that, when the next day it fell back to Leipsic, Wallestein could 
barely collect 2,000 men around his standards. 

Ferdinand affected to look on Lutzen as a victorj'^ : and formally 
thanked Wallestein for its achievement. But his real feeling was 
that the death of Gustavus would enab?e him once more to do 
without the general of whom he was ever distrustful: and who, 
had his services been still more unquestionable, would probably 
have cancelled them all in Ferdinand's narrow cruel mind by the 
advice which he now urged upon him to avail himself of the con- 
sternation and embarrassment which the death of Gustavus had 
caused to the Protestants to conclude peace on the basis of a 
general amnesty and religious toleration. In the end, therefore^ 
the battle of Lutzen was as fatal to Wallestein as to Gustavus : 
and he soon became aware what machinations for his digrace, if 
not for his destruction, were set on foot. During the winter he 
recruited his army so effectually that at the return of spring, he 
had again 40,000 men at his disposal ; but ho soon learnt that 
among them were some spies, employed to watch all his movements 

^ Every account of the battle that But the huiF coat which Gustavus 

I have seen, except that of Coxe, wore in tlie battle is still preserved 

affirms that the fatal shot wounded in the arsenal at Vienna, where Coxe 

Gustavus in the back; which is pro- affirms that he examined it himself, 

bahly, to a great extent, the founda- and that 'it is onlj- perforated in the 

tion for the statement that has been front.' — House of Austria, c. 54, 

frequently made that he was treacher- p. 145, note. 8vo. edit. 1820 
ously killed by one of his own officers. 



&.D. JG33.] FERDINAND'S JEALOUSY OF WALLESTEIN. 209 

and to report tLem at Vienna. He performed one considerable 
service by surprising a division of 5,000 Swedes, with a strong 
train of artillery, under the command of Count Thurn at Stenau : 
and compelling them to lay down their arms ; but, as the capitu- 
lation which he granted them secured the liberty of the officers, 
that act of humanity neutralised the merit of the exploit in the 
eyes of the Emperor, who had promised himself the gratification 
of executing Thurn for his former zeal in the cause of the Elector 
Palatine. 

Wallestein's zeal in pressing his political opinions in favour of 
peace began to be quickened by a feeling cf what was best for his 
own safety. He was aware that he had enemies at court who 
misrepresented all his acts and motives. And he wished, if he 
could disencumber himself of it with honour, to lay down a com- 
mand which only exposed him to envy and calumny. The best 
way of arriving at that end was to bring about a general pacifica- 
tion ; and, as he had already recommended an accommodation on 
more than one occasion, he seems to have conceived the idea that 
he might facilitate such a measure by opening the negotiation 
himself. 

Such, it can hardly be doubted, was the original purpose of 
the intercourse which, towards the end of the year 1633, he 
began to hold with some of the Protestant leaders ; nor did he 
conceal from the Emperor's ministers his belief that peace was 
inevitable, and his own desire to have a share in the negotia- 
tion entrusted to him. But he soon perceived that not only was 
there no intention of confiding a new commission to him, but that 
the terms of that which he did hold were systematically violated. 
Orders were sent by the Emperor to his officers which were a direct 
infringement of the absolute command which had been conferred 
upon himself; and he could not doubt that a resolution had been 
taken at Vienna to irritate him into the resignation of his com- 
mand, or, if that plan failed, to deprive him of it, if not to destroy 
him. He determined to protect himself. The communications 
which he had opened with the leaders of the enemy with one 
object, the peace of Europe, he now continued for another. He 
determined to fly, and he sent the Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg (who 
since the battle of Lutzen, when he fought on the side of the 
Swedes, had quitted that party and attached himself to Wallestein 
and his fortunes) to Duke Bernard to request his protection. But he 
was too late. Ferdinand had not only resolved on his destruction, 
but had already taken steps to render it immediate. He sought to 
blind his victim by a show of increased confidence in him, writing 
to him, on the thirteenth of February, that ' he confided the kino-- 
dom of Bohemia to his approved care and protection should the 



210 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1631. 

Swedes advance against the frontier ; ' ^ but nearly tlaree weeks 
before he had signed a secret edict, not only depriving Wallestein 
of his command, and conferring it on two Italians, Generals 
Gallasso and Piccoloniini, but declaring him an outlaw, and com- 
manding those officers to secure his person, dead or alive. They 
took these measures with as much secresy and treachery as their 
Imperial master ; but an English writer cannot record without 
shame that the agents of this infamous plot were his own country- 
men : one. Colonel Butler, was an Irish Catholic ; two, Colonel 
Gordon and JNlajor Leslie, were Scotch Presbyterians: a fourth, 
Captain Devereux, was an Englishman ; all officers of General 
Tersky's regiment, bound to their great commander by numberless 
acts of liberality, and enjoying his entire confidence. On the 
twenty-fifth of February he was passing through Egra, in Bohemia, 
where he had a small palace, escorted by Tersky's regiment, and 
attended by a small staff, of whom General Tersky, Count lUo, 
and Count Kinsky, were the chief members. Nobles and officers 
supped together in the castle, all but Wallestein himself, whose 
health confined him to a rigid regimen, and who remained at the 
mayor's house in the market-place, whei'e he was lodged. But, 
while the meal was proceeding, the conspirators introduced some 
private troopers whose aid they had secured, into the adjacent 
hall, and as soon as the servants had retired the deed of blood was 
commenced. A.s Butler had not dared to tamper with Tersky and 
the nobles, they were to share Wallestein's fate. At a given' 
signal, Devereux exclaimed ' Who is for the Emperor ? ' admitted 
the troopers into the supper-room, and, at their head, he, Butler, 
Gordon, and Leslie fell on the unsuspecting victims. Kinsky and 
lUo were struck down in a moment. Tersky sprang to his sword, 
which he had hung upon the wall, and throwing himself into a 
corner, sold his life dearly. Two of his assailants fell dead, and a 
third mortally wounded, before his sweeping blows. Devereux he 
disarmed, but at last he was overpowered by numbers ; and then, 
when all the rest had been despatched, Butler and Devereux crossed 
to Wallestein's quarters, where, though he had by this time re- 
tired to bed, the guard, knowing their rank, and supposing they 
had business Avith him, admitted them without scruple. They 

1 Quoted by Colonel Mitchell, the Colonel relies as his principal 
LifeofJVallestein,\).o2l. Mitchell's authoritj', and which was compiled 
account of these transactions is not from the archives of the War de- 
very perspicuous, but I have had no partment at Vienna, was not pub- 
hesitation in preferring- his narrative lished till 1834. It may be remarked 
to Schiller's, because he supports it thatCoxe,whoseaccount on the whole 
by quotations from existing docu- is very favorable to Wallestein, was 
ments, of which Schiller takes no ignorant of the edict of outlawry 
notice, perhaps from ignorance ; since of the twenty-fourth of Januarj'. 
Forster's -Leyeo/' Wallestein, on which 



A.D. 1634.] MURDER OF WALLESTEIN. 211 

rusted up the stairs ; Wallestein's valet desired tliem to make less 
noise, as his master was going to sleep. ' It is a time for noise/ 
shouted Devereux, and thrust open the bedroom door. Walle- 
stein had risen from his bed, and had gone to the window to learn 
the cause of the uproar; he turned round and confronted the 
assassin. ' Thou must die ! ' once more shouted Devereux, and 
plunged a pike into his general's heart, who fell dead without a 
word. 

Ferdinand, who a day or two before had caused prayers to be 
offered up in all the churches of Vienna for the success of his 
design, disgraced himself further by conferring munificent rewards 
on all concerned in the assassination. He published an official 
account of the transaction, and of his own motives, too full of 
inconsistencies and notorious falsehoods to obtain credit for a 
moment. And the real truth was long concealed under his pom- ' 
pons but apparently authentic statements. Recently it has been 
revealed by an examination of the archives of the different de- 
partments preserved at Vienna and Prague, which the Emperor 
Francis II. permitted a modern Prussian writer to make ; which 
has vindicated the great warrior's innocence of the charges 
of treason that had been brought against him and has shown 
that he fell a victim to the jealousy of a timid, ungrateful, and 
cruel prince; who, having granted him powers which, it must 
be confessed, were immoderate and incompatible with the due 
exercise of his own authority, was rendered jealous by his own 
fears, and was not ashamed to extricate himself by a base treachery 
to which not even the assassination of Guise by Henry III. can 
supply a parallel. 

Gustavus and Wallestein are the two prominent heroes of the 
Thirty Years' War. The German duke was not a military reformer, 
nor an inventor of new tactics, like his royal antagonist ; but, as a 
commander in the field, he was but little inferior to him, and con- 
fessedly superior to every soldier in the Emperor's service. With 
the deaths of these two great men the war loses its most striking 
and interesting features. It was still waged for many years with 
undiminished animosity, with no ordinary skill, and with strangely 
varying fortunes ; the Emperor's son, afterwards Ferdinand III., 
with the Bavarians Mercy and John de Wert, being successively 
the Imperial leaders, and Duke Bernhard, Banner, and Torstenson, 
the two latter countrymen and worthy pupils of Gustavus, con- 
ducting the Protestant armies. At one time Ferdinand routed the 
Swedes at Nordlingen, and, skilfully supported by John de Wert, 
had nearly reduced the Protestants to a peace which, in fact, 
would have been submission to the Emperor on liis own terms. 
At another Torstenson illustrated the old battle-field of Leipsic with 



212 MODERN HISTORY. [a.b. 1634. 

a second and still more decisive victory. Meanwhile, France, lier 
inveterate hatred of Spain combining with the larger views of 
policy which had heen bequeathed to her by Henry IV., was 
gradually throwing her sword more and more heavily into the 
scale ; and the final termination of the war was accelerated, if not 
directly brought about, by the effective support which the armies 
of that Catholic country, while a cardinal of the Catholic church 
was its prime minister, afforded to the champions of German 
Protestantism, as will be related in the ensuing chapter.^ 

1 The authorities for the preceding JVar, Haute's Life of Gustavua 
chapter are chiefly Coxe's House of Adolphus, Mitchell's Life of Walle- 
Austria, Schiller's Thirty Years' stein. 



/; 



A.D. 1610.] DISMISSAL OF SULLY. 213 



CHAPTER X. 

A.D. 1610—1648. 

THE immediate consequences of the murder of Henry IV. were 
a return to the old system of corruption and intrigue which 
Sully had done so much to discourage ; and for a moment it seemed 
not unlikely that with it the internal disorders and even civil 
wars which had made the preceding reigns so miserable and so in- 
famous would return likewise. Queen Marie, following the example 
set her by her kinswoman Catharine de Medici on the accession of 
Charles IX., had secured the regency to herself, for the young king 
Louis XIII. was only nine years old, and she surrendered herself 
wholly to the guidance of a couple of Italian favorites of the lowest 
extraction and of the vilest character, whom she had brought with 
her on her first arrival in France, and on whom she now lavished 
honours of all kinds with a most indiscriminate profusion. Con- 
cini had been one of her household servants. Leonora Galigai 
whom, on her arrival in France, she had made chief lady of her 
bedchamber, was the daughter of a Florentine carpenter. They 
had married with her sanction soon after their settlement in 
France ; and one of her first acts of power was to make the husband 
Marquis d'Ancre, governor of Amiens, and Marshal of France, 
though it could not be pretended that he had the slightest military 
knowledge, or had ever served in any army. The nobles soon 
learnt that he was not contented with his military rank, but that 
he aspired also to direct the councils of the nation ; and that, who- 
ever might be the ostensible minister, it was by his advice and 
that of his wife that the queen regulated her policy. The first fruits 
of their councils were seen in the removal of the late king's chief 
minister, Sully, the great financier, to whose ability and integrity 
was due the wonderful revival of the kingdom's prosperity, but 
whose continued exercise of the same qualities seemed an insur- 
mountable bar to the projects of these foreign favorites. He was 
dismissed at once. His colleagues, and all those who had enjoyed 
most of the late king's confidence, were gradually got rid of j and, 
with the removal of all the ablest administrators of the govern- 



214 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1614. 

ment, all respect for the laws began to disappear. The nobles 
began to quarrel with one another, a brother of the Due de Guise 
even murdering the Baron de Luy in open day in the streets of 
Paris ; while Conde, the first prince of the blood royal, adopting 
the family policy of enmity to the Guises, whom Marie seemed 
to regard with favour, at last, at the beginning of 1614, quitted the 
court, and, supported by a formidable body of princes and nobles, one 
of Henry's natural sons, the Due de Vendome, being among them, 
openly raised the standard of revolt, and made himself master of 
some of the chief foi tresses on the north-eastern frontier. His 
professed object was to prevent a marriage which Marie was under- 
stood to be negotiating for the young king with the Spanish Infanta 
Anne; and on which he contended that the States-General had a 
right to be consulted. And, though the whole army which he had 
been able to raise to support his demands did not amount to 5,000 
men, it so far exceeded any at the queen's disposal, that she was 
compelled to pretend acquiescence in his terms, and in May 1614 
signed a treaty with the insurgents, known as that of St. Mene- 
bould, in which she promised to summon the States- General, and 
to reserve the question of the king's marriage for the decision of 
that body. 

On the latter point she had not the least intention of keeping her 
promise ; for, by the French law, the king came of age on his thir- 
teenth birthday, whicb was close at hand; and after that his marriage 
would depend on his own will. But she convoked the States-General, 
which Louis opened in state a few days after his majority : and, 
powerless as that body was, its meeting on this occasion is ren- 
dered memorable by two circumstances. It was the last time on 
which it was assembled for nearly two centuries. Defective in 
its original constitution, it had long ceased to exercise any in- 
fluence on the affairs of the kingdom ; and from this time forth it 
fell into complete disuse, and was never heard of again till its 
fatal revival in 1789, when its rash and misguided vehemence 
overthrew church, monarchy, and aristocracy in one common ruin. 
Though as ineffective and unimportant as ever in its own transac- 
tions, its present convocation had an influence on all the subse- 
quent history of the reign, if not of the kingdom, by introducing 
to notice a young prelate, Richelieu, bishop of Lufon, who, being 
chosen by the clergy as their spokesman to present their final 
memorial of grievances to the king at the close of the session, thus 
obtained an opportunity of displaying his talents, which gradually 
opened him the way to the highest offices of the state, and a weight 
in its councils which has never been enjoyed by any other subject. 

He was now twenty-nine years of age, being the youngest son 
of a gentleman of ancient lineage in Poitou. He had been 



A.i>. 1616.] RISE OF EICHELIEU. 215 

originally intended for the army ; but on a vacancy occurring in thfl 
see of Lufon, which the influence of his family seems to have 
almost appropriated to themselves, since it had been previously 
held by one of his elder brothers, he willingly exchanged the 
military career for a profession in which he perhaps perceived that 
his peculiar talents were better calculated to lead him to eminence, 
though he always retaizied a fondness for the details of military 
operations, and more than once showed no inconsiderable capacity 
for directing them. It is characteristic of the unscrupulous 
audacity of his character that, as he had but just completed his 
twenty-second year when he was nominated for this preferment, 
he could only obtain his investiture by deceiving the Pope as to 
his age, which he represented as more advanced than it really 
was 5 and that he unblushingly confessed the deceit as soon it had 
answered his purpose ; and equally characteristic of the laxity of 
all the Papal arrangements, and of the Papal conscience, that 
Paul V. expressing not indignation at his fraud, but admiration of 
his ingenuity, saying to those around him that the new bishop was 
a youth of rare genius, but astute and crafty. He speedily became 
celebrated as a preacher ; but a reputation for theological learn- 
ing could not gain him the political power which was his object ; 
and he exertedhimself more to ingratiate himself with the queen as 
a courtier, not disdaining, even after Henry's death, to conciliate 
the favour of Concini by constant and well-directed attentions. 

Henry IV., ashas been mentioned, had given a regular organisation 
to bis council, allotting a separate department to each minister, 
establishing a controllership of finance, and secretaryships of state 
for the conduct of foreign affairs, of war, of diplomacy, and of the 
internal concerns of the kingdom, as we see in modern ministries ; 
and one of these offices Richelieu from the first coveted for him- 
self, confident that, whichever might be allotted to him, he should 
be able to render the leading post in the government. With this 
view, in his speech to the young sovereign in the States- General, 
he had introduced a complaint that the royal council contained 
no member of his own profession, though such an exclusion of the 
ecclesiastical element was, as he contended, not only an insult to 
the Church, but a cause of weakness to the government. And 
having thus indicated the direction of his own ambition, for his 
meaning could not well be mistaken, he waited patiently for his 
hint to take effect. 

He had soon the gratification of seeing- affairs take a course 
which furthered his views. Once more Conde raised the standard 
of civil war ; and Marie, who, though her son was nominally of 
age, still retained the chief direction of the government, had no 
resourcebutto makepeace with him, granting nearly all hisdemanda, 



216 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1616. 

tliougli one of tliem was the removal of her favorite the Marshal 
d'Ancre from his government of Amiens, and the dismissal of 
nearly all her ministers. And among the changes which ensued, 
the Bishop of LuQon received the appointment of almoner ; a post 
which gave him constant access to her person, and opportunities 
of tendering advice, though, while d'Ancre lived, the influence or 
authority possessed by anyone else was biit nominal. But it 
requires great abilities and great yirtues to save a man raised to 
such an elevation as the marshal from becoming an object of general 
hatred, which sooner or later brings about his ruin ; and d'Ancre had 
neither virtues nor abilities. Accordingly, some of the highest 
nobles of the land began to plot his destruction : and they were 
aided by one whose enmity was more formidable than theirs. 
Louis, though only fifteen, possessed full authority, if he chose to 
exercise it ; and he was already giving signs of the weakness 
which beset him all his life of surrendering himself wholly to some 
favorite or other, (though, while he continued a boy he had more 
excuse than afterwards for always seeking some one on whom to 
lean) and for choosing his friends badly. His first favorite was a 
gentleman named de Luynes, who had been recommended to him 
by his skill in hawking and other sports of the field. De Luynes 
was not ambitious in the better sense of the word, but he was 
covetous and cunning. He envied the Ooncini their wealth which 
was truly reported to be enormous, and he desired, by supplanting 
them, to become as rich as they. He began to fill the king's ear 
with stories of the detestation in which the marshal and his 
wife were held by all classes, of their rapacity and their presump- 
tion : and likewise to suggest that it was only their influence with 
Queen Marie that prevented Louis himself from having the autho- 
rity in the state to which he was entitled. D'Ancre was not 
ignorant of the machinations of his enemies ; he believed Cond6 to 
be the chief mover in them, and as there was really reason to 
suspect that the prince was again plotting against the govern- 
ment, though none at all to think that any scheme which so giddy 
a plotter could contrive likely to be formidable, he persuaded Marie 
to order his arrest, and Louis himself was easily brought to sanc- 
tion it. He was seized and thrown into prison ; but he was more 
dangerous to the marshal as a captive than when at liberty. On 
hearing of his arrest his mother, the old Princess of Conde ran in 
frenzied fear through the streets, exclaiming that the Concini were 
murdering her son ; the mob, who hated them, rose in a fury and 
sacked their palace, and would have killed them could they have 
found them. 

The queen dowager was greatly alarmed ; both for the safety of 
her favorite, and for the preservation of her authority : to secure 



A.» 1617.] CONSPIRACY AGAINST D'ANCEE. 217 

both, lier chief dependence was on her almoner, whose advice, 
though always decided in its character, and generally j ustified by 
results, had always been given in too courtier-like a tone to ofifend. 
And in November 1G16, she introduced him into the council as 
secretary of state ; giving him at the same time precedence over all 
the other members of the council, except the president, the Cardinal 
de Rochefoucault. But she soon learnt that, if she had not under- 
rated his talents, she had mistaken his objects. He was not 
anxious for, nor content with the name of power without the 
reality : on the contrary, he had a definite policy, which he was 
resolved to carry out. And he at once began to disconnect him- 
self and to endeavour to detach his royal mistress from the Concini, 
whose ruin he was too shrewd not to foresee. It was nearer at 
hand than he probably anticipated. The nobles who hated him 
easily persuaded de Luynes to renew his machinations against 
him. His destruction, in fact, was indispensable to the success of 
de Luynes' own views. And at the beginning of 1617 he willingly 
undertook the task of persuading Louis, not only to consent to the 
destruction of the Concini, but to undertake the chief manage- 
ment of the affair himself. Young as Louis was, a mean, cunning, 
malignity was already the chief characteristic of his disposition : 
it was visible in his conduct to the last, but it never was more 
curiously or more shamefully displayed than in the way in which 
he himself planned and carried out the assassination of the mar- 
shal : for d'Ancre's enemies saw no safety for themselves, save in 
insisting on his death. The Baron de Vitry, an officer of the 
guard, who conceived himself to have been injured or insulted by 
the marshal, was easily induced, by the promise of succeeding to 
his baton, to take upon himself the execution of the intended 
murder : such was the almost universal wickedness and cruelty of 
the age, that he had no difficulty in collecting a baud of gentlemen 
of fair title and fortune to join him in the atrocious deed. And, 
when all the preliminaries were settled, Louis took the final 
arrangement of the details upon himself. Timid by nature, he 
was afraid not only of failure, but of the consequences of failure to 
himself, and to secure the means of his own escape he osten- 
tatiously fixed a hunting party for the appointed day, the twenty- 
fourth of April, as a plea for having his carriage in readiness to 
fly. When the morning came, he ranged the assassins in the 
courtyard of the palace, and carefuUj' selected a sentry, and placed 
him at the entrance, to give them notice of the approach of the 
marshal who came every morning to attend the queen, At the 
expected hour the doomed victim entered the courtyard : a p;stol 
shot brought him to the ground, and de Vitry and his brothers 
finished the bloody deed with their swords : gentlemen by birth, 



218 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1619. 

tliougli they "were, they robbed the dead man of his purse aud 
je^wels before they left him : and the transaction was crowned by 
Louis appearing at one of the windows of the palace with his 
fowling-piece, thanking the butchers for their act, and crying out 
that ' Now at last he was a king.' 

Queen Marie showed herself almost as base as her son. Sus- 
pecting that those who had wrought the destruction of the mar- 
shal bore no good will to herself, she tried to save herself by 
refusing shelter to the murdered man's widow, who, before the 
end of the week, was arrested, impeached and executed on the 
charge of having obtained her influence over her by magical arts. 
But such pusillanimity, far from appeasing her enemies, en- 
couraged them. Those who had persuaded Louis to consent to 
d'Ancre's murder had found it equally easy to alienate him from his 
mother, who herself had often worried him by frivolous and captious 
complaints, and to convince him that he would never be his own 
master, nor enjoy his legitimate authority, till she were removed 
from the court. She was now ordered to retire to Blois, where 
she remained a prisoner at large for nearly two years : her exile 
being even accompanied by cruel and needless insult, de Vitry 
searching her rooms, and with studied insolence examining the 
space under the bed, her chests and hex wardrobes, on the pretence 
of taking care that they contained no gunpowder for the destruc- 
tion of the king, whose sleeping apartments were over those 
allotted to his mother. For a time it seemed as if her disgrace 
would be fatal to Richelieu's prospects. He was deprived of his 
office of secretary : and though de Luynes, who had now become 
the sole dispenser of honours in the state, permitted him to retain 
his place at the council board, he soon found that he was not in- 
tended to have the slightest influence, and began to suspect that 
it would be more for his interest to continue his adherence to the 
queen mother ; he obtained permission to retire to Blois, where 
for a while he discharged the duties of superintendent of her house- 
hold ; and though he was afterwards removed by an express order 
from the court, he never broke off his connection with her till, as 
he foresaw that it would do, it had procured his reinstatement in 
office. 

For, by the beginning of 1619, de lAiynes himself began to con- 
ceive the idea of bringing Marie back to Paris that he jnight use 
her authority with her son to counteract the influence of Conde, 
who was always intriguing against whoever from time to time 
might be in authority or in favour. But while he was hesitating, 
the Due d'Epernon, whose objects were wholly opposed to his, 
contrived her escape from Blois ; and, as she showed an inclination 
to make her reconciliation with the king depend on his dismissal 



A.D. 1620.] EECONCILATION OF MAEIE AND LOUIS. 219 

of de Luynes, the favorite was ia great perplexity ; his first ex- 
pedient was to persuade Louis to raise an army to attack the duke 
with whom Marie remained, on the pretence that he had carried 
her off against her will, and was keeping her under restraint. But 
after he had collected the troops, he was ashamed to advise their 
employment ; he preferred persuasion, and induced Louis to write 
a letter to Richelieu with his own hand empowering him to treat 
with her for a complete reconciliation. 

The bishop gladly undertook a commission which, he flattered 
himself, would lay both mother and son under obligations to him. 
But he did not find his task so easy as he had expected. Marie 
was petulant and capricious ; and, flattered by finding how much 
importance was attached to her movements, thought to increase it 
by an apparent reluctance to a reunion. After a long negotiation, 
and with great difficulty, he did indeed persuade her to pay Louis 
a visit at Tours, but she refused to return to Paris, and sullenly 
kept aloof from the court, so far disappointing the hopes which 
Richelieu had founded on his performance of the part of mediator 
between the king and herself. She even, with the aid of some of 
the nobles who were jealous of the i'avorite, raised an army and 
prepared for war : but again de Luynes levied another, and in- 
duced the king to accompany it ; and, as according to the prevail- 
ing notion, his presence with an army greatly increased the treason 
of resisting it, the confederates were reduced to complete inaction ; 
till at last, at the end of the summer, Richelieu, who saw clearly 
how ruinous to his own interests a protracted warfare between 
mother and son must be, took skilful advantage of the change of 
feeling and the irritation among the malcontent nobles which was 
produced by their inability to eff"ect anything, persuaded Marie to 
allow him to arrange a perfect reconciliation ; and a formal 
treaty of peace between the mother and son was at last signed at 
Angers in August 1620. 

That event, though it did not at once procure his restoration to 
office, paved the way for it. De Luynes, thinking that the cir- 
cumstances under which peace in the royal family had been re- 
established, (the queen having been at last reduced to the attitude 
of a suppliant for the reconciliation which she had previously 
disdained) relieved him from all danger of future opposition, 
became more exacting and overbearing than ever. He had pre- 
viously been contented with amassing wealth ; he now grasped at 
honours also, coveting even such as he was notoriously and ridi- 
culously unfit for. He compelled Louis to break his promise to 
Marshal Lesdiguieres, the most distinguished soldier in France, in 
order to give the constable's sword to himself, though he had 
never seen a battle. He thought himself ps fit to be at the head 



220 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1624. 

of the law as at the head of an army, aud persuaded his royal 
master to add the chancellorship to his military dignity : adding 
petition to petition till the king himself became weary of his 
covetousness and importunity, and the courtiers hegan to speculate 
on his weariness leading to the disgrace of him who caused it : 
when, at the end of 1621, he died after a short illness. 

Unless the king should get another favorite of the same stamp, 
his death made Richelieu's return to power inevitable : but it was 
not yet to be immediate. It was probably a hindrance to it that 
the next year Marie, whose hereditary influence with the court of 
Rome^was great, procured him a cardinal's hat : for Louis had 
been jealous enough of his influence with his mother to endeavour 
by secret intrigues to prevent his promotion : and this feeling still 
showed itself when two years later, while yielding to her so far as 
to readmit him to his council, he refused to replace him in his old 
office of secretary of state, though it was vacant. But Louis was 
imable to estimate the ascendency of a genius such as that of the 
cardinal. It was easy to keep him out of the council : it was 
impossible, when he had once been admitted to it, to prevent him 
from becoming, with or without office, the most important member 
of it ; when, a few weeks afterwards, it became necessary to ap- 
point a commission to treat witli the ambassadors who arrived 
from England to arrange the marriage of the Princess Henrietta 
Maria with the Prince of Wales, he was named as one of the com- 
missioners, and as a cardinal, assumed precedence over all his 
colleagues : and gradually effected a complete rearrangement of 
the administration, desiring at first to disguise his own influence by 
giving the king public advice to allow no single minister or favorite 
to monopolise his confidence : though, in subsequent years, when he 
had fully established himself, he threw off all such concealment, and 
seeking rather to parade his authority before the whole world, in 
1629 extorted from Louis an edict appointing him Prime Minister, 
an office previously unknown in Europe. Still, this title added 
nothing to his real power : if that had been capable of augmenta- 
tion, he would have been unable to extort it : aad from August 
1624, when he remodelled the ministry, he may be looked on as 
the sole and uncontrolled ruler of the kingdom j and, as such, he 
began to carry out with unflinching steadiness the policy which he 
had marked out for himself, and which was in fact a revival of the 
system of Henry IV. It may be described in a few words as 
having for its object the establishment of the king as absolute 
master of France, and the establishment of France as the para- 
mount mistress of Europe. The first object was not a new one, 
even in Henry's time. It had been the aim of the best and 
greatest of all French monarchs, St.-Louis, whose celebrated code, 



A.D. 1624.] POLICY OF RICHELIEU. 221 

Irno-svn as ' Les Etablissemens de St.-Louis,' had been carefully 
framed with the design, among others, of breaking down the over- 
grown feudal power of the barons, and of establishing in its stead 
the absolute supremacy of the sovereign. It had been equally the 
object of that one of his successors who least of aiU resembled him, 
the detestable Louis XI. He had accomplished it, though by the 
vilest means, with the most entire success : but, as the anarchy of 
the latter part of the sixteenth century had bequeathed to Henry 
the necessity of renewing the contest ; so the weakness of the 
government during the early part of the present reign had undone 
his work ; and, if order and tranquillity were ever to be re-estab- 
lished on a solid and permanent foundation, it was as necessaiy a 
preliminary to break down the power of the nobles now as it had 
been in the thirteenth or the fifteenth centurJ^ It might be said that 
in France nothing had survived of the feudal system but its worst 
parts. The nobles had preserved the traditions of the time when 
Normandy, Burgundy, Aquitaine, and the great provinces were 
in all but name independent principalities, and when the king was 
in realitj'' only one of a body of princes, and if the highest in rank, 
hardly the first in power : and they seemed to be gradually and 
rapidlv bringing the nation back to that condition. To employ 
Richelieu's own description of the state of affairs when he first 
took his seat in the council, ' the great lords were acting not as 
the king's subjects, but as independent chieftains. The governors 
of his provinces were conducting themselves like so many sovereign 
princes ; the interest of the public was postponed to that of in- 
dividuals ; in a word, the king's authority was torn to shreds, and 
was so unlike what it ought to have been, that, in the confusion, 
it was impossible to recognise the genuine features of his royal 
power.' ^ 

The power which they had thus regained, and which was in 
truth only a power of disorder, Richelieu resolved to crush for 
ever beyond all possibility of revival. But, before he entered on 
that contest, he desired to weaken another body whose pretensions 
were the more formidable that they were founded in clear and 
recent law. Some of the concessions which Henry IV., perhaps 
from some unconscious sympathy with those whom he had de- 
serted, had made to the Huguenots, certainly went further than a 
j udicious policy could warrant, and were, to say the least, calcu- 
lated to give uneasiness to a statesman charged with the govern- 
ment, and as such responsible for the tranquillity of the kingdom. 
And the conduct of the Huguenots themselves had not been so 
uniformly prudent as to remove that impression. They had, 
very unwisely, supported Conde in his various intrigues to 
1 Testament Politique, quoted by Stephen, c, ii. p. 316. 



222 MODERN HISTOEY. [a-d. 1620. 

elevate the authority of the Parliament, and to thwart the ad- 
ministration of the queen mother during the king's minority. On 
one occasion, when he tried to renew civil war and raised a force 
which reduced a few unimportant towns, the Huguenot assembly, 
in its triennial meeting at Grenoble, formally declared in his 
favour; thus making it evident that some of the privileges which 
bad been granted to tbem were not only impolitic, but practically 
dangerous to the state : and as such, a patriotic minister might 
well think it his duty to curtail them. Queen Marie's bigotry 
would Lave inclined her to make the attempt during the regency, 
but the government was too weak and unpopular. When de Luynes 
became the king's chief adviser, as his principal object was the 
maintenance of peace which- could alone enable him to amass the 
honour and riches which he coveted, he gave his voice for tolera- 
tion and, though he did so far gratify the Catholic bishops as to 
advise the king to issue a mandate confirming one of his father's 
edicts which had established Catholicism in his native province of 
BeaiT}, he abstained from enforcing it, and the Bearnais were 
permitted, in spite of it, to enjoy their old independence, and to 
preserve the religion of their venerated queen, Jeanne d'Albret. 
But, as Louis grew up to manhood, he learnt to look on any kind 
of liberty, and especially on freedom of opinion, as incompatible 
with the despotic authority which he conceived to belong to him- 
self and, with this feeling, he conceived a bitter enmity against the 
Reformation as founded on principles of freedom. The influence 
which he exerted against the Elector Palatine in Germany has 
been mentioned, and he followed up the blow which he thus dealt 
to the Protestants beyond the Rhine by leading an army into 
B^arn to compel obedience to the edicts of which d'Luynes had 
hitherto connived at the violation. The Bearnais were too few in 
number to resist, but the Huguenots throughout the kingdom at 
once stood on their defence. Rochelle was their principal strong- 
hold ; and there, at Christmas 1620, they held a meeting to frame 
a remonstrance to the king on the insults which, in spite of the 
edict of Nantes, the Catholic priests in the different provinces had 
Btimulated the populace to heap upon them. And as their address, 
though dutifully and loyally worded, received a fierce and threat- 
3ning answer, they at once took arms and prepared for war. It 
was a hopeless struggle. Louis marched into Poitou with an army 
of nearly 50,000 men, whose real commander was the Marshal 
General Lesdiguieres ; and though Montauban and Montpelier, 
where the Huguenots had their strongest garrisons, successfully 
repulsed their besiegers, most of their other fortresses were taken, 
and were treated with extraordinary cruelty by the king's express 
orders, not only their garrisons but their peaceful inhabitants being 



A.D. 1626.] INSUREECTION OF THE HUGUENOTS. 223 

mnssacred. Luckily, for those who remained, Louis, tlaougli ty- 
rannical and ferocious, bad but little perseverance ; and in less 
than two years he admitted them to the treaty of Montpelier, 
which, though abrogating most of the privileges which had ren- 
dered them almost independent of the crown, still left them entire 
freedom to exercise their religion. 

But the Huguenots were slow at learning lessons of prudence. 
If, in the most important points, their position had not been made 
worse by the recent treaty, it had been greatly damaged by the 
proofs which the previous campaign had given of their weakness ; 
and, encouraged by their evident inability to cope with the royal 
forces, the enemies of their religion violated the provisions of the 
treaty at pleasure ; the governors of the towns in which they were 
strongest introduced garrisons and built forts in open violation of 
its stipulations ; the populace attacked their churches during the 
celebration of public worship ; they could obtain no redress from 
the courts of law, where the judges were not ashamed to declare 
that the king could not be bound by any agreement with any of 
his own subjects, much less with heretics and rebels. And, exas- 
perated by these provocations, at the beginning of 1625 they took 
advantage of Lesdiguieres and his army being engaged in Piedmont, 
assisting the Duke of Savoy against the Spaniards, and once more 
had recourse to arms ; seizing the Isles of Oleron and Khe, and 
capturing a squadron of men of war, which they believed, no 
doubt with truth, had been stationed there in preparation for an 
attack upon the great town of Rochelle itself, the only stronghold, 
except Montauban, which the last treaty had left them. But a 
firmer hand than that of de Luynes was now at the helm, Richelieu 
resolved to subdue them so completely that they should have no 
power ever again to become formidable ; but the blow which he 
destined for them was suspended for a while. He knew his own 
strength, and that they could not escape him, but he was no bigot ; 
he cared indeed so little about religion that, as has been mentioned 
in a former chapter, he had begun to aid the German Protestants 
whom Louis had formerly discountenanced ; and, thinking it of 
far greater importance to weaken the Spaniards in the north of 
Italj', he still kept Lesdiguieres in that country, and permitted 
the king of England to mediate between him and the Rochellois, 
who were once more admitted to treat, and even to obtain a miti- 
gation of some of the articles agreed to at Montpelier. 

The peace of Rochelle, however, was but a respite for them. A 
month afterwards peace was concluded between France and Spain, 
and Richelieu, relieved from all foreign foes, had leisure to mature 
his preparations against those of his own countrymen whom he 
regarded as enemies. In any case, he would not have left the 



224 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1628. 

Huguenots long at peace, "but they were so ill-advised as once 
more wantonly to provoke him to war. The policy of the British 
cabinet was at this time wholly regulated by the caprices of the 
Duke of Buckingham, the most incompetent and the most arrogant 
of royal favorites. His vanity had led him to believe that the 
French queen had fallen in love with him ; and because Louis, justly 
offended at some liberties which he had permitted himself, refused 
to receive him as an ambassador from England, he instigated the 
Due de Soubise, chief leader of the Huguenots, to rouse that party 
to a fresh rebellion; and, in July, 1627, without any previous 
notice or declaration of war, he arrived of Rochelle as commander- 
in-chief of a powerful fleet and army : and commenced an attack 
on the Isle of Ehe. He conducted it so badly that he lost the 
greater part of his force, and returned to England greatly dis- 
credited ; while the cardinal gladly seized the fair pretext afforded 
him by this utterly unprovoked rebellion to carry out the measures 
against the Huguenots which he had long meditated : and fortune 
80 favoured him that the success which he obtained greatly aug- 
mented his personal credit, being very mainly due to his own 
talents displayed in au entirely new field. 

Lesdiguieres had died at a great age in the preceding winter : 
and, as there was at this time scarcely any commander in the 
French army of pre-eminent reputation, Eichelieu determined to 
conduct the operations himself, and accompanied the king to the 
scene of action. The discomfiture of Buckingham was greatly 
owing to his energy ; but, not content with defeating one attack, 
he resolved to render a repetition of it impossible. He saw that, 
so long as the sea was open, England would always be able to 
encourage and succour the Kochellois : and he determined to cut 
them off from the sea. Buckingham had hardly retired, when he 
began to construct a vast wall, a mile long, along the whole front 
of the port; resting, at both its ends, on the mainland, and having 
only one small opening in the centre, which was commanded by 
heavy batteries. It was a grand engineering conception, and the 
difficuldes of its execution severely tested the engineer's practical 
skill; but Richelieu was a taskmaster imder whom no workman 
dared to make difficulties : and, in spite of a severe winter, the 
work was so nearly completed before the return of spring, that 
when, in May 1628, a British fleet, commanded by Lord Denbigh, 
returned, as Richelieu had foreseen that it would return, it found 
the wall unassailable, and could do nothing but sail back to Ply- 
mouth, while the citizens of Rochelle, now blockaded by sea and 
land, began to suffer all the miseries of famine. Buckingham 
himself was assassinated while equipping another fleet to retrieve 
the disgrace which, as he conceived, Denbigh's retreat had in- 



A.D. 1629.] CAPTUEE OF EOCHELLE. 225 

fleeted on the British arms : but Charles, carrying out his mur- 
dered favorite's policy, gave Lord Lindsey the command of the 
force which he had been preparing, and in the autumn despatched 
it with stringent orders to do all that could be done to relieve the 
beleaguered city, on which all the hopes of the French Protestants 
rested, but which was now reduced to the extremity of distress. 
Lindsey was a man of skill and resolution : at a later day he laid 
down his life in his sovereign's own cause at Edgehill : and now 
he endeavoured to encounter Richelieu's novel expedient for main- 
taining the blockade with a contrivance equally novel, and so 
ingenious that one of the greatest sailors of modern times did 
not disdain to imitate it. Richelieu had defended the wall on its 
outer face with a large boom moored in front of it, such as nearly 
two centuries later protected the roads of Aix : and Lord Lindsey 
constructed a huge fireship, not unlike those which Lord Cochrane 
afterwards termed explosion vessels, to destroy it ; it was charged 
with 12,000 pounds of powder, and was quite sufficient to destroy 
both boom and wall. But in those days the art of coi-rectly timing 
so prodigious an explosion had not been attained : the vessel ex- 
ploded too soon, and at too great a distance from the boom to 
have any effect. It was in vain that Lindsey charged the barrier 
with his fleet in full sail : it resisted his utmost efforts : and, as a 
distant cannonade could produce no effect on the wall, he too was 
at last compelled to draw off, and to leave the citizens to Richelieu's 
mercy. Even when all hope was gone, they held out resolutely ; 
their mayor, M. Guiton, on entering his otHce, which he was only 
prevailed on to accept by the importunities of those who knew 
)iis worth, had laid a dagger on the council table, to be used 
against the first citizen who should propose to surrender, and 
against himself if he should prove craven : and his language had 
not overstated his resolution. Soon all ordinary provisions were 
exhausted ; and the citizens were reduced to feed on leather, on 
seaweed, and on other food still more loathsome. But even when 
16,000 people, nearly half the population, had died of starvation, 
Guiton's spirit was unsubdued. ' There still were men enough,' he 
said, ' to shut the gates,' and he boxed the ears of one of the 
judges who proposed to capitulate. But at last the courage of all 
but himself was worn out. Even of the miserable food on which 
they had hitherto sustained life their store would only last three 
days longer: they surrendered; and Richelieu, who had more 
than once during the siege promised them moderate conditions, 
did not depart from his promise of clemency. He could honour 
such valour and constancy, and could see how available it might 
prove for his own objects when enlisted in the king's service. He 
iid indeed raze the fortifications of the city, and prohibited the 



226 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1630. 

citizens from possessing arms or ammunition ; but tlie Huguenots 
were still allowed to exercise their religion without hindrance, 
and, on taking an oath never again to hear arms against the king, 
received an amnestj'' for the past. 

His success at Rochelle begat in Richelieu a desire to shine 
again as a commander of military operations. . The next year he 
again took the field in a campaign to establish a French noble, 
the Due de Nevers, in the Duchy of Mantua, which had devolved 
on him as heir to his cousin, the preceding duke ; and the parade 
of his military equipment amused those who thought it inconsis- 
tent with his ecclesiastical profession, and those also who were 
pleased to see so great a man not insensible to the weakness of 
personal vanity. He went as if in attendance on the king, who, 
accompanied by a brilliant stafi", was the ostensible commander-in- 
chief : but before setting out, he extorted from the monarch the 
titles of 'Lieutenant-General, representing the person of the king,' 
and ' Generalissimo,' a title like that of Prime Minister, previously 
unheard of: and, enjoining the army at the foot of the Alps, he 
laid aside his priestly vestments, aud led on his men in military 
panoply, with cuirass of burnished steel, sword by his side, pistols 
at his saddlebow ; in imitation of Henry IV. he wore on his head 
not a helmet, but a conspicuous white plume : and from time to 
time he would cause his warhorse to curvet and caracole, boasting 
loudly that he was not unskilled in military exercises., With 
vigour and promptitude, very important qualities in a militaiy com- 
mander, he again showed himself to be richly endowed. Though it 
was midwinter, he allowed no delay in his operations : he crossed 
Mount Genevre, took Pignerol, though one of the strongest places 
in Piedmont: while Louis, attended by Marshal Bassompierre, 
the ablest general in France since the death of Lesdiguieres, over- 
ran Savoy: and before the end of the year, all the enemies of 
France were reduced to make peace on terms which secured her 
nearly all that Richelieu had aimed at. 

Having thus subdued the Huguenots, and terminated the foreign 
war in which he had engaged with honour, he had leisure to 
devote to his next object, the depression of the nobles: but, while 
he was meditating on the measures to be taken against them, his 
career as a minister was nearly cut short by enemies whose ma- 
chinations he had neither guarded against nor suspected, but whom 
it certainly could not be denied that he had abundantly provoked. 
Even those who contend that he used his power for patriotic 
objects cannot deny that he was unscrupulous in the means he 
employed to obtain and preserve that power, and among them was 
a system of unwearied intrigue by which he sowed jealousies 
among the different members of the royal family, with the object 
apparently of reducing them all to a state of dependence on him- 



A.D. 1630.] THE DxYY OF DUPES. 227 

self. Bat, crafty as he was, Le never took into bis calculations 
the chance of their all uniting against him. He looked on Queen 
Marie as his firm friend ; and though he had good reason to suspect 
that Queen Anne's disposition towards him was different, he con- 
ceived that he had cut off all chance of her ever obtaining any 
influence. Ho had entirely alienated her husband from her, 
though at one time Louis had been inclined to love her as much 
as his cold nature allowed him to love anyone. And at last he 
had ventured to plan her entire ruin, endeavouring to implicate 
her in a plot which the king's brother, Gaston, duke of Orleans, 
one of the most contemptible of mankind, had formed for his 
assassination, and not scrupling to use the very basest means, but 
offering to spare the life of one of the conspirators on whom sen- 
tence had already been pronounced, on condition of his giving 
false evidence against her. Anne believed that he designed to 
compel Louis to divorce her ; and in the extremity of her fear, she 
sought an ally and found one where the cardinal least apprehended 
such a danger. While he had been engaged with the army in 
Piedmont, Queen Marie had regained her old ascendency over 
her son, which she had no doubt that Richelieu would again en- 
deavour to undermme. Fear of future injury acted on her as 
resentment for past wrongs influenced Anne ; laying aside their old 
mutual jealousies, the two queens combined against their common 
enemy, and took advantage of a dangerous illness with which 
Louis was attacked at Lyons in the autumn, and which gave them 
both constant and uncontrolled access to him, to exact from him a 
promise to dismiss his minister on the conclusion of the peace with 
Spain, which was kuown to be on the point of being signed. It 
was not hard to obtain the promise ; for, in truth, Louis was as 
much afraid of the cardinal as they, and liked him as little ; but 
it was very difficult to be sure of his performing it ; though from 
the moment that the cardinal was suspected to be in disgrace, all 
the courtiers, male and female, laboured to strengthen his resolu- 
tion by tales of Pticlielieu's arrogance, cruelty, and general un- 
popularity. 

The result of the struggle afforded a curious instance of Louis's 
weakness and submission to any one who chose to domineer over 
him. At the beginning of winter the court returned to Paris, 
where Richelieu rejoined it ; and there, at the beginning of Novem- 
ber, after a violent scene in the Luxembourg palace, in which, in 
the king's presence. Queen Marie heaped reproaches on the minister, 
Louis consented to his retirement ; and the cardinal retired, to 
make instant preparations for quitting the country, where he 
feared per.-^onal danger from the many enmities which he had pro- 
voked. But finding that the king had afterwards gone to Versailles 



228 MODERN HISTORY. Ta.d. 1631. 

by himself, at the instigation of one of his friends, he followed him 
thither, obtained admittance to his presence under pretence of 
taking a formal leave of his majesty and of completing the formal 
resignation of his offices, and, in a brief interview, undid all the 
work of the morning. Louis retained him in his post of Prime 
Minister ; and, while the Parisians, who detested him, comforted 
themselves for their disappointment by a joke, and nicknamed the 
day^ ' the Day of Dapes,' left him at liberty with greater power 
than ever to wreak his revenge on those who had plotted his fttll. 
And he was not a man to make a generous use of such power. 
He imprisoned Marillac, the chancellor, for life, merely because 
Marie had designed him for his successor in his office of minister. 
He threw Marshal Bassompierre into the Bastile, and left him 
there for twelve years ; Louis himself, when he signed the warrant 
for his arrest, being so much ashamed of it, that he sent the marshal 
at the same a message to say that he had committed no crime ; 
his real ofience being that he had refused to exert his influence 
with the king in the cardinal's fayour ; and that, a week after the 
Day of Dupes, he had pleaded a prior engagement when Richelieu 
invited him to dinner. He prosecuted Marshal Marillac, the 
chancellor's brothei", and commander of the army in Piedmont, on 
a false charge before a packed tribunal created for the purpose, 
and sent him to the scaffiDld, because he was understood to have 
answered for the adhesion of the troops under his command to the 
projected change in the ministerial arrangements. Some nobles, 
even of the first rank, he banished ; of others he confiscated the 
estates; and finally, at the beginning of the next year, having 
crushed all his minor foes, he proceeded to take vengeance on the 
queen mother herself; prevailing on her worthless son to banish 
her from his presence. Not unreasonably fearing for the safety 
even of her life, she fled the kingdom, at first taking refuge in the 
Netherlands, and afterwards wandering through diSerent coun- 
tries, and suffering great distress; for Richelieu stopped all the 
revenue which had been settled on her, but which her son, who 
added avarice to his other vices, was easily persuaded to appro- 
priate. And finally, having had all her petitions for leave to return 
to France refused, though more than once Louis would willingly 
have granted them had not the cardinal interposed to prevent him, 
she died at Cologne in 1642, of a fever brought on by chagrin and 
privation, a few months before the deaths of theminister who had 
defeated, and of the son who had deserted, her. 

Richelieu had thus contrived to unite his object of depressing 
the nobles with the gratification of bis personal resentment ; and 
the ever-restless spirit of intrigue in the only enemjr whom he 
spared gave him throughout the rest of the reiga abundant oppor- 



^.D. 1632.] TREACHEEY OF THE DUKE OE ORLEANS. 229 

tunity of repeating the lesson he had thus given them. The Duke 
of Orleans was the enem j ; and he spared him, not because of his 
proximity to the throne, of which he was as yet the heir, nor out 
of mercy, nor even out of contempt, but because he looked on 
him as the surest tool through whom to detect and chastise the 
rest. He knew that he v/ould be ever plotting against him ; he 
also knew that he would be too cowardly to conduct his plots to 
their execution, and that he would be treacherous enough always 
to seek his own safety in the betrayal of his accomplices. Once 
he had nearly miscalculated, for on one occasion Gaston was so 
irritated at his neglect of some of his friends, whom the cardinal 
had promised to promote, that he forced his way into his house at 
the head of a body of armed followers and threatened to murder 
him on the spot. But he had not hardihood to carry out his 
threat, even when he had his enemy in his power ; but contenting 
himself with heaping the lowest abuse on him, withdrew without 
striking a blow, and retired to Orleans to weave more plots, and 
to betray them as soon as he had entangled in them a sufficient 
number of high-born accomplices to ensure his being able to make 
his peace by their sacrifice. The Due de Montmorenci, the last 
representative of the most noble family in the whole peerage, was 
one of his victims. The Duke of Puy Laurens, though married 
to one of the cardinal's cousins, was another. The Duke de la 
Valette, Avhom Richelieu designed to pursue with particular 
hatred, but who was fortunate enough to escape from the country, 
he condescended to execute in effigy three times over : at Paris, at 
Bordeaux, and at Lyons. The last victim was a personal favourite 
of Louis himself, the Marquis de Cinq Mars, Gaston covering his 
infamy bj'' giving formal evidence to procure his condemnation, 
and endeavouring to implicate others who were undoubtedly 
innocent of the plot in which he himself and the prisoner had been 
concerned, merely because he believed Pdchelieu would be glad of 
a pretext to destroy them. 

And while thus putting some nobles to death, and reducing others 
to beggary, Richelieu was equally diligent in acquiring fresh honours 
and wealth for himself. He was made a duke and peer of France ; 
he obtained, if it were not more correct to say he conferred on him- 
self, a grant of many of the estates which he confiscated ; and he 
had thus amassed an enormous fortune, of which he spent portions 
with the most insolent ostentation, and portions with princely 
liberality and judgment. He built a palace for himself which no 
king's palace in Europe could equal in extent and magnificence, 
then known as the Palais Cardinal, and subsequently as the Palais 
Royal. But he also devoted large sums to the promotion of learn- 
ing and the fine arts. He founded the Academy ; an admission 



230 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1685, 

into which is still the distinction most coveted by the chief literary 
ornaments of the nation. He founded and endowed a college for 
education at the Sorbonne. And he bestowed from his own purse 
pensions on men of ability to enable them to devote their lives to 
the studies in which each was best qualified to shine. One of 
those so pensioned has left an immortal name, Pierre Corneille, 
the earliest of the great tragic writers of France, who, in the 
winter of the very year in which the Spanish army at Corbie, 
had made Paris itself tremble for its safety, won the citizens to 
forget their alarm by the production of the '■ Cid,' still perhaps the 
noblest specimen of tragedy which the French language affords. 

It was not till by his victories over the Protestants and the 
aristocracy he had established the Ling's authority at home to his 
satisfaction, that he began to direct his serious efforts to his third 
object, the depression of the House of Austria; for the war with 
Spain, which has been mentioned, had been conducted on too 
limited a scale, and had been too brief in its duration, to have any 
permanent effect. But just at the moment that he first had 
leisure to turn his undivided attention to foreign politics, the Pro- 
testant princes, who were in arms against the Emperor, had fallen 
into difficulties, which favoured bis views in a singular manner. 
The death of Gustavus, and the defeat of the Swedes at Nordlingen, 
which were mentioned in the last chapter, reduced them to such 
straits that they had no means of continuing the contest without 
additional foreign aid ; and sought to purchase his by a cession of 
the great province of Alsace ; to be considered indeed not as a 
French province, but as one under French protection, which, to a 
grasp as tenacious as that of Richelieu, was much the same thing. 
He joyfully accepted the ofFer, and in May 1635 concluded a treaty 
with them, with the States of Holland, with Sweden, with Switzer- 
land, and with several of the petty states in the north of Italy, 
and formally declared war against Spain and the Empire. In the end 
her share in the war produced great glory and solid advantages to 
France ; but the successes by which it was earned were not achieved 
till after his death ; and during his lifetime she not only carried 
on the war with very chequered fortune, but on one occasion was 
brought to the very brink of disgrace and ruin through his rash 
over-confidence. While sending one army into Savoy, and another 
to invade Franche-Comte, he overlooked the danger to which his 
own country might be exposed ; and in 1636, the Cardinal Infante, 
who commanded the Spanish armies in the Netherlands, having 
received intelligence of the weakness of the principal French for- 
tresses on that side of the kingdom, that their fortifications were 
in decay, their garrisons scanty and in want of supplies, suddenly 
crossed the frontier with 30,000 men, driving before him the small 



K.-D. 1642.] THE SPANISH INVASION. 231 

division which had been allotted to Marshal Breze for the pro- 
tection of the district ; he took town after town without resistance ; 
and in a few days reached Corbie, which was scarcely more than 
fifty miles from Paris. It seemed as if nothing could save the 
capital from capture ; and nothing could have saved it, had the 
Infante been able to exercise real authority over his men ; but they 
were greedy adventurers, and had found such vast booty in the 
towns which they had already taken that they preferred returning 
to the Netherlands to secure it, rather than risking it by further 
enterprises. Their general was forced to humour them and to 
retrace his steps, and the citizens of Paris breathed again ; but so 
deep was their recollection of the terror which they had felt that 
the year of their danger was long commemorated as the Year of 
Corbie. In other districts gain and loss constantly balanced one 
another. If in Lorraine- the Imperial Piccolomini cut a French 
division to pieces, in the north of Italy the Marshal d'Harcourt 
and the Vicomte de Turenne, to whom these campaigns afforded 
the first opportunity of displaying his great abilities, gained ad- 
vantages equally important over the Spanish Marquis de Leganez 
and Prince Thomas of Savoy, and neither could strike a blow 
which the most sanguine could regard as decisive. 

The victories which were to close the war, and to efface all 
recollection of the occasional disaster of the French armies by the 
glory with which they at last crowned them, Richelieu was not to 
witness. His constitution had never been strong; and by the 
end of 1642 was completely worn out ; he gradually lost the use 
of his limbs, and became unable to move, and even to bear any 
mode of conveyance, except that of a litter borne on men's 
shoulders. His nerves too gave way, and he fell into a state of 
helpless terror, expected to be assassinated by emissaries of the 
king himself. At the beginning of December, an attack of pleurisy 
came to complete his sufferings ; and on the fourth day of that 
month he died, at the age of fifty-seven, having been a minister 
for above eighteen years, and absolute master of the whole 
authority of the government for twelve. 

The unanimous verdict of subsequent ages has placed him in the 
very front rank of great statesmen : and if largeness of mind, great- 
ness of objects, a clear discernment of the means best suited for 
these accomplishments, and resolution in carrying out his designs, 
can entitle a man to that praise, it certainly cannot be denied to 
Richelieu. He proposed to himself important objects, and he 
succeeded in them. He did not indeed live to see with his own 
eyes the overthrow of the pre-eminence which the House of Austria 
had enjoyed for above a century, and the elevation of France in 
her stead ; but it was on the point of accomplishment when he 



232 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1&12. 

died, and tliat it was accomplislied, was owing to his successor'a 
sagacity in still building on the foundation which he had laid, and 
pursuing the policy which he had inaugurated. And though it 
will now be admitted, that the solid and permanent welfare of a 
nation is better promoted by the acts of peace, than by designs 
only attainable through successful war, we cannot in fairness 
refuse our admiration to a statesman for not being far in advance 
of his age. He succeeded in establishing the absolute power of 
the soTereign; and though we may fairly question the wisdom of 
preferring to a limited monarchy an absolute despotism, yet in 
prosecuting this design, he was animated by as genuine a patriotism 
as guided his foreign policy. In his view the king was to desire, 
to possess, and to exercise his absolute authority, solely, or at least 
principally, for the benefit of the people : though uncontrolled 
by his subjects, he was to acknowledge the restraints of religion, of 
justice, and of public spirit. If he was to have all a father's authority 
over his children, he was also to have all a father's love for them. 
And it must be remembered, too, that Richelieu was not seeking 
to introduce a new order of things, but to re-establish the old 
practice. Centuries had elapsed since the kings of France had 
first rendered their power absolute ; and, though in the last two 
or three generations their prerogative had been greatly weakened, 
it had yielded not to constitutional restraints, but to anarchy : 
and the struggle which was in progress when he became minister 
was one not between constitutional and despotic authority, but 
between order and anarchy. If the only mode in which, according 
to the unvarying precedents of the national history, order had ever 
been maintained was the uncontrolled will of the sovereign, the 
minister may surely be excused who sought the restoration of 
order by a return to such despotism. But, while admitting the 
patriotism of his political views ; admiring the ability with which 
he accomplished them ; and giving also our warmest praise to the 
enlightened spirit in which he laboured to encourage education 
and learning, matters which few rulers had at that time thought 
worthy their attention, we must speak of him as a man in very 
different language. Few or none have so prostituted their power 
to the gratification of their private animosities : few have been 
equally mean and faithless in their intrigues, equally treacherous, 
equally revengeful, equally relentless. For the preservation of 
his own power, he did not hesitate to set the son against the 
mother, to sow dissensions between the husband and the wife ; to 
avenge fancied slights, or imagined designs against his influence, 
he did not scruple to consign able and honest servants of the 
country to life-long imprisonment, or even at times, as in the case 
of Marshal Marillac, to send them to the scaffold on charges 



i.D. 1643.] EISE OF MAZARIN. 233 

wMcIi he knew to be false, supported by evidence wbicli he linew 
to be perjury. And on the whole, it must be considered that if, 
as statesmen and rulers few have been greater, as men few have 
been more criminal or more odious. Even while dying, he pre- 
served his influence over his master; inducing him to appoint, as 
his successor, one who might have been supposed disqualified for 
such a post by his birth, since he was a native not of Prance, but 
of Rome. The negotiations which had terminated the war for 
the Duchy of Mantua, though nominally entrusted to the Pope's 
legate, Pancirolo, had been mainly conducted by a young man in 
his train, Giulio Mazarini, who in their conduct had displayed an 
activity, an acuteness, a fertility of resource, and a promptitude of 
decision, which had at once attracted Richelieu's notice. He had 
induced him to quit Rome, and to settle at Paris ; and, as further 
acquaintance strengthened his original impression of the yoimg 
Italian's capacity, he had employed him in more than one impor- 
tant afi:air, had obtained for him a cardinal's hat from the Pope, 
and though he must have seen that his character was widely dif- 
ferent from his own, had done his best to inculcate his own views 
of policy on his mind, and to train him to fill his place. Louis 
adopted his advice, and, on the very evening of his death, 
installed his pupil in his oflice, giving thus the most practical 
notice of his intention to adhere to his system ; which the new 
minister, whom we shall henceforward call, by the French abbre- 
viation of his name, Mazarin, made equally manifest, by the osten- 
tatious preparations which he at once set on foot, for continuing 
the war with energy. Fortune has a proverbial influence over the 
events of war : and, in the arrangements which he made for the 
coming campaign, Mazarin was singularly favoured by the goddess 
who aids the bold. Sensible, perhaps, that he was not endowed 
with the resolution and firmness by which Richelieu had stamped 
out all open opposition, and even all secret jealousy; and aware 
that the king, who had placed him in power, could not live long 
to maintain him in it ; he sought rather to cultivate the goodwill 
of all classes, and especially to ingratiate himself with the diifereut 
members of the royal family. Louis's marriage had long been 
unproductive, but, at the end of twenty-three years, in the autumn 
of 1638, Q,ueen Anne had given birth to a Dauphin : and, two 
years later, to a second son, who eventually succeeded to his uncle's 
title of Duke of Orleans. It had, therefore, become necessary to 
make arrangements for the government, in the event of a minority ; 
and Mazarin, in accordance with the plan which he had prescribed 
for himself, now persuaded Louis to nominate the queen to the 
regency, and to appoint his brother Gaston, lieutenant-general 
of the kingdom : while, to gratify the Prince de Cond^, who in 



234 MODEIIN IIISTOHy. [a.d. 1643. 

the royal family stood next to the descendants of Henry IV., lie 
placed his son, the Due d'Enghien, though scarcely of age, at the 
head of the army of Picardy, not scrupling to entrust to a youth 
who had served but one campaign the task of opposing the most 
renowned veterans of Spain. 

Louis died on the fourteenth of May 1643, the anniversary of 
his father's assassination. And, only five daj's afterwards, the new 
reign was inaugurated by the most brilliant victory, which had been 
won by France, over a foreign enemy, since a former d'Enghien 
saved her from invasion at Cerisoles : and which seemed to justify 
the choice which had committed the force on which, above all 
others, her safety defended, to the youthful inheritor of his name. 
D'Enghien was so notoriously devoid of military experience, that 
Mazarin, while giving him the supreme command, had sent with 
him the Marshal de I'Hopital and General Gassion, commanders of 
well-proved valour and skill, intending that he should guide him- 
self by their advice. But the young prince was too self-confident 
to be aware that he needed counsel, and too headstrong to take it. 
And he was eager to display his personal valour in a battle. 
The Spaniards, under two tried veterans, Don Francisco de Mello, 
and the Gount de Fuentes, were heseiging Eocroi, a town of great 
importance, as one of the keys of the rich province of Champagne, 
with 20,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry : the French army num- 
bei'ed 1,000 more sabres, but in infantry was weaker by 4,003 men : 
but, disregarding this inequality, d'Enghien, justifying his resolu- 
tion by the necessity of saving so valuable a town from falling into 
the hands of the enemy, determined on an instant attack ; and, 
luckily for him, de Mello was as over-confident as himself, Tlie 
Spanish position was very strong : a wood covered one flank, a 
marsh protected the other, and a small plain, which extended in 
front of it, could only be approached by a narrow defile. To 
attack such an enemy in such a position was, as de I'Hopital truly 
declared, to court destruction; but d'Enghien was deaf to all 
warnings, and plunged into the narrow pass in which a few thou- 
sand men could with ease have destroyed his whole army. But 
from the defeat, which no valour of his own troops could have 
averted, he was saved b}'' the equal folly of the Spaniard. In 
full assurance of victory, de Mello suffered the French to clear the 
defile, and to deploy into line of battle without molestation, con- 
fident of being able to defeat them, and relying on the narrow pass 
which would be their sole line of retreat to render the disaster 
more overwhelming. Voltaire has afiirmed that the Due d'Enghien 
was born a general, and that he stands almost alone as a possessor 
of a genius which could dispense with experience : the higher 
qualities of a general he never possessed at any time ; but it can- 



A.D. 1643.] THE EATTLE OF ROCEOI. 235 

not be denied that even in this his first hattle he displayed extra- 
ordinary quickness and correctness of judgment in discerning the 
progress and varying character of the fight, and a rare promptitude 
of decision in availing himself of each circumstance as it arose. On 
the morning of the nineteenth, he attacked the Spanish army, along 
its whole line. At first the result seemed doubtful, each of the 
commanders-in-chief being successful where he fought in person. 
Each led on his right wing, and, while d'Enghien beat back the 
Spanish left under the duque d'Albuquerque, de Mello inflicted 
Btill greater loss on the French left, under de I'Hopital, driving it 
"back on the reserve and capturing its artillery. But d'Enghien'a 
eagle eye saw what had happened ; he at once gave up pressing 
d' Albuquerque, and wheeled his division round so as to take de 
Mello's victorious battalions in the rear, before they had recovered 
from the disorder into which their pursuit of de I'Hopital's brigade 
had thrown them : they could not withstand this unexpected 
attack, the prince recovered even the guns which they had taken ; 
and, being now victorious at both extremities of the field, could 
employ his whole force against the Spanish centre, the flower of 
their army, which de Fuentes held in reserve, and which had not 
yet been engaged. He had no time to lose ; for in the distance 
was seen a fresh division of 6,000 men, hastening to take part in 
the conflict, and quite sufficient to turn the scale : but, contenting 
himself with sending Gassion with a small force to hold these 
troops in check, he without a moment's delay led on all the rest 
of his army against de Fuentes. More than once he was repelled 
with terrific slaughter. As he came up to the charge, the dense 
square in which the Spaniards were arrayed opened, and unmasked 
a heavy battery which poured into his ranks a deadly fire, before 
which the bravest of his soldiers quailed. Again and again he 
was beaten back ; but at last he brought up his last reserves, and 
also his cannon, De Fuentes was killed, and then, as the French 
guns cut wide gaps in the Spanish ranks, the French soldiers in 
hand-to-hand combat forced their way into the openings ; the 
square, once pierced, was easily overpowered, and the victory was 
won : 8,000 Spaniards were slain ; 7,000 were taken prisoners : 
their artillery too, and their baggage fell into the hands of the 
conquerors, whose loss did not much exceed 2,000 men. 

Rocroi was not d'Enghien's only victory ; though Fribourg, in 
which lie fought the next year for two days against the great 
Bavarian general de Mercy, scarcely deserves the name of one. It 
is true that at last de Mercy, whose numbers were far inferior to 
those of his antagonist, was forced to retreat ; but it is equally 
true that his loss was far less than that which had been sustained 
by the French. But in two other battles fortune, and the skill of 



236 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1646. 

others rather than his own, enabled him to boast of decisive 
triumphs. Throughout this reign it was part of the policy of the 
French court to secure a factitious reputation for military skill to 
the princes of the blood royal, by giving them stronger and better 
appointed armies than were entrusted to other commanders : in 
this wa-y at times enabling them to retrieve the disasters which 
had befallen others who had been worse provided. And thus, in 
the spring of 1645, Mazarin left Turenne with a very inadequate 
force to confront de Mercy in the district between the Mayn and the 
Danube ; but when Turenne had suffered heavy loss at Mariendal, 
d'Enghien was at once sent to the scene of action, which raised his 
army to 23,000 men, and greatly outnumbered that at the disposal 
of the great Bavarian general. De Mercy had but 15,000, so entirely 
by this time were the resources of the Empire exhausted by the 
war ; but he surpassed d'Enghien in skill as much as he fell short 
of him in force : had Turenne been the commander-in-chief, there 
would have been no battle, and, in the battle which did take place, 
had de Mercy himself lived, the French would have sustained a 
defeat which would have counterbalanced Rocroi. De Mercy had 
taken up a position in front of Nordlingen, which Turenne pro- 
noimced it madness to attack : his army being drawn up on a hill, 
his centre being strengthened by a village,.his left wing by a for- 
tified castle, his rear being protected by inaccessible mountains, 
and his front covered by well-planned and strongly-armed in- 
trenchments ; and when d'Enghien, deaf to all advice, attacked it, 
every part of the French army was beaten : his infantry was re- 
pulsed in its attacks on the Bavarian centre : Jean de Werth, de 
Mercy's second in command, was driving his cavalry before him in 
disorderly flight : when a chance shot laid de Mercy dead on the 
field, and in an instant the fortune of the day was changed. Jean de 
Werth, excellent when under the command of others, was nervous 
under the responsibility of finding himself the chief commander. 
He hesitated : instead of at once pressing on the French, beaten in 
every quarter as they were, he began to manoeuvre, and gave them 
time to recover from their disorder : and there have seldom been 
commanders better able to profit by a respite than d'Enghien and 
Turenne, The marshal rallied the broken infantry; the prince 
arrested the flight of the cavalry ; the battle was restored ; the 
influence of numbers began to tell ; and at night Jean de Werth 
drew oft' his men, leaving the French the field of battle, but no 
other token of victory in a battle which nothing but his own want 
of energy could have enabled them to call a drawn one, much less 
a victory. 

Three years later the prince, having in the interval succeeded to 
the title of Conde by the death of his father, gained a more 
decided victory over the Spaniards at Lens ; though there his own 



A.D. 1648.] THE PEACE OE WESTPHALIA. 237 

flatterers could not deny that he was beaten, till the skill of the 
Marshal de Grammont, his second in command, retrieved the day 
and there, too, fortune aided him by the death of the most formid- 
able of the hostile generals. At Rocroi de Fuentes had fallen at 
the most critical moment of the battle ; at Nordlingen de Mercy was 
slain when nothing but his death could have saved the French ; 
and now, while the issue of the day was still doubtful, General 
Beck, who had led the Spanish cavalry with admirable gallantry, 
and had broken Coude's own regiment, received a mortal wound. 
In the end, however, the French victory was complete ; and was 
not without its influence on the treaty which, a few weeks later, 
concluded the war. 

For negotiations had for some time been going on to arrange 
the terms of a peace for which all the contending parties were 
equally anxious : and in the last week of October the treaty was 
signed at Munster which finally put an end to the Thirty Years' 
War. It was advantageous, as well as honorable, to the German Pro- 
testants, to whom it confirmed all the concessions which had been 
made to them at Passau ; while it also prevented all possibility of 
the Catholic prelates and statesmen any longer taking advantage of 
the dissensions between their ditterent sects, by placing both Cal- 
vinists and Lutherans on the same footing. It even provided for 
the extension of Protestantism by clauses which allowed all states 
and princes at present Catholic to change their religion, and 
stipulated that such a change should forfeit none of their existing 
rights as members of the Empire. The Elector Palatine was dead, 
but the greater portion of the Palatinate was restored to his heir : 
as other princes, who had been deprived of any portions of their 
dominions through their adherence to his cause, also obtained 
their restoration. But the greatest gainer by the treaty was 
France. Her right to retain possession of Metz and the rest of 
that district won by Henry II. had hitherto always been dis- 
puted : it was now acknowledged. No attempt was made to 
disturb her possession of Pigiierol ; and she obtained an absolute 
cession of Alsace, a territory of great value in itself, but chiefly im- 
portant from the advantages which it would afford her in the event 
of any future war arising between her and the Empire : though, 
perhaps, in another point of view, pernicious to her from the 
temptation which 'it would thus present to a prince of aggressive 
ambition.* 

1 The authorities for the preceding bery and by Siri, between Avhich the 

chapter, besides the regular Histories author proposes to hold the balance, 

of France and Coxe's House of A us- Aubery being, as he says in his pre- 

tria, are a Life of Richelieu, pub- face, an insupportable flatterer, ani' 

lished anon3^mously at Cologne in Siri too unscrupulous a detractor 

1G95, but founded to a great extent the Memoirs of Bassompierre ; and 

on Memoirs of the Cardinal by Au- several Biographies of Conde. • 




238 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1648. 



CHAPTER XI. 
A.D. 1648. 

ON receiving the intelligence of tlie victory of Lens, the first 
remark made by the young king was that it would be a great 
vexation to the parliament : for during the preceding spring and 
summer Paris had been greatly agitated by a quarrel which had 
broken out between the ministry and that body, ever on the watch 
to extend its privileges, and which resulted in a rebellion on 
which it will be worth while to dwell with more minuteness than 
the importance of its origin seems at first sight to deserve, because 
no series of events shows more clearly how great was the de- 
moralisation which had already infected the princes and nobles of 
the land. How completely every consideration of good faith, of 
loyalty, and of humanity, had been banished from the minds of 
the very highest, whether in birth or in general reputation ; and 
because it is in this general want of principle, spreading down- 
wards till it pervaded every class of society, that we may trace the 
seeds of that more fearful rebellion which, a century and a half 
later, overthrew all the institutions of the country. 

The quarrel originated in one of Sully's financial measures. 
Before his time it had become usual to allow superannuated judges 
to sell their offices to anyone qualified to discharge their duties, 
and willing to purchase ; and, acting on the suggestion of one of 
his secretaries, M. Paulet, from whom the new impost took the 
name of La Paulette, Sully established a regulation that, in con- 
sideration of a small annual tax, the judges should be allowed to 
leave their offices to their heirs, to be disposed of by them, in case 
that they themselves should not have made arrangements for the 
succession during their lifetime. The tax was certainly a very 
light one, if compared with the greatness of the boon which it 
secured to those who paid it; so that when Mazarin, at the 
beginning of this year, found himself compelled, by the expenses 
of the war, to increase many of the taxes, he not unnaturally 
selected La Paulette as one of the imposts which, as falling 
exclusively on a wealthy body, could be raised with the least 
difiiculty and the least injury to the state. Bat the lawyers were 



A.D. 1648.J MAZARIN AUGMENTS LA PAULETTE. 239 

as little inclined as any other body to submit to an augmentation 
of their burdens. And, while each class complained of the or- 
dinances which affected itself, the parliament tried to make com- 
mon cause with all, by putting forward a claim to examine the 
whole mass of edicts ; some of the chambers even asserting a right 
to prevent their execution after they should have been registered : 
till at last^ rising in these pretensions, they endeavoured to bring 
the whole taxation of the kingdom under their own revision, and 
appointed a committee to deliberate generally on measures neces- 
sary for the reform of the state. 

The appointment of a committee so manifestly illegal was a 
challenge to the minister which he could not refuse, and the 
manner in which he took it up was very characteristic of his 
temper, and brought into prominent light some of his chief defects. 
Mazarin had some qualities well suited to his position, and some 
which were a serious bar to the efficient discharge of its duties. 
He was singularly attractive in person and manner ; he was acute, 
ingenious, ready, and capable at times of acting with vigour and 
decision. But he was too much inclined to rely on his ingenuity 
and address ; his cleverness too often degenerated into cunning 
and trick : he was completely ignorant of the previous history of 
the kingdom and of the feelings of the people, nor had he the 
sagacity to perceive that many systems, even though their original 
institution may have been impolitic, yet cannot, after they have 
been long established, be abolished without still greater impolicy. 
Two necessities now pressed upon him : to collect an increased 
revenue, and to repress and chastise the presumption of the 
parliament. And he conceived that he saw a plan Avhich would 
combine both objects; which would at once sow divisions among 
the malcontents, and, to a great extent, disarm them by depriving 
the rest of the co-eperation of the parliament, the body the most 
able to represent their grievances with effect ; while it would at 
the same time punish the parliament itself, by appearing to grant 
that body even more than it had asked, though the concession 
would, in fact, by destroying the inheritable character of their 
offices, deprive them of half their value. He announced that the 
augmentation of all the other taxes would be persisted in, but 
that, instead of raising La Paulette, as he had proposed, he would 
remit that impost altogether. He was so proud of the wit of thus 
'cursing them with a granted prayer' that he overlooked the 
danger which might arise from their opposition, when their 
habitual fondness for factious resistance and encroachment was 
sharpened by the more legitimate purpose of defending those 
pecuniary interests which they had some right to look upon as 
secured under the guarantee of the government. It was a common 



240 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1654. 

estimate that 45,000 families were connected with the profession 
of the law ; and the whole of that vast body was now seized with 
consternation and anger, of which the parliament naturally be- 
came the representative and spokesman. They held meetings in 
spite of the regent's prohibition ; not contented with demanding 
the redress of their present grievance, they proposed measures for 
the reform of most of the departments of the state, but conducted 
the meetings with so much more violence than steadiness, that 
one of the members of the reforming committee, M. Bachaumont, 
compared their conduct to that of the schoolboys slinging stones 
under the city walls, who ran away as soon as they saw the police 
coming to interrupt their sport, but resumed it as soon as the 
officers had turned their back. The jest spread out of doors, and 
hit the general fancy. The French word for a sling is Fronde ; it 
was at once adopted as a party badge, and when, presently, the 
parliament and its supporters broke out into open insurrection, 
they called themselves La Fronde, and each member of the party 
a Fronde^ir. 

Mazarin by himself might still have been able to prevent the 
discontent from ripening into revolt : but the queen regent was 
passionate and impulsive. She adopted his advice to re-establish 
the Paulette, and even to grant some of the reforms which the 
parliamentary committee had recommended ; but she cherished a 
deep resentment against its leaders, who, as she viewed matters, 
had compelled the crown to submit to such humiliation : and when 
shortly afterwards, a Te Deum for the victory of Lens was cele- 
brated at the great metropolitan cathedral of Notre Dame, in the 
presence of the king, the princes, and the chief nobles of the land : 
and when, to do honour to the solemnity, the streets were lined 
with troops, she resolved to make the force thus collected an 
instrument of her revenge, and, as soon as the king had returned 
to the Tuileries, she sent the detachment which had formed the 
royal escort to arrest a member named Broussol, who had rendered 
himself conspicuous by his fiery declamation against some of the 
abuses of which the committee complained ; with some other 
councillors, who had also taken a leading part in the agitation. 
The whole city rose in a moment. Broussel's maid-servant called 
out of Jbis window to the passers hj, tliat the officers were carry- 
ing off her master. Instantly a mob collected, so fierce and furious, 
that it was not without hard fighting, and the entire destruction 
of the carriage in which the prisoner had been placed, that the 
officer commanding the escort was able to convey him to a place 
of security : and, before his companions were lodged in their 
separate prisons, the whole populace was thronging the streets in 
formidable bands; uttering frantic menaces against the palace; 



A.D. 1648.] CAEDINAL DE RETZ. 241 

■brandishing weapons, and sliouting the ill-omened savage crj% 
' Kill, kill ! ' which had not been heard since the day of St. Bar- 
tholomew. It was in vain that the royal guards tried to quell 
the tumult, their commander, the Marshal de la Meilleraye, even 
shooting with his own hand one of the foremost rioters. The mob, 
who were too frantic to be pacified, were too strong to he intimi- 
dated, and the only consequence of the marshal's act was to fur- 
nish the rioters with a leader able above any other man in France 
to render the revolt formidable. 

.Tohn Francis Paul Gondi, so much better known by the title 
which he subsequently attained of Cardinal de Retz, that it will 
be more convenient to speak of him by it from the first, was co- 
adjutor to his uncle, the Archbishop of Paris ; and, as his eventual 
successor in that see, was already a man of great consideration and 
influence. His faculties qualified him to shine in almost every 
profession, except that which had been chosen for him. He was 
acute, ready, fearless, a shrewd judge of men and circumstances, 
and utterly unscrupulous. His ecclesiastical profession and rank 
did not prevent his being one of the most dissolute of men ; almost 
before he had grown to man's estate he was a notorious and suc- 
cessful duellist; and, though remarkable for his ugliness, no lay 
noble surpassed him in the triumphs of gallantry'or in the number 
of his mistresses. But his darling passion was notoriety. Accord- 
ing to his own account, he had learned from 'Plutarch's Lives' that 
the highest of all positions was that of 'the head of a party; and, 
as he could not arrive at the object of his ambition by attaching 
himself to the court where Eichelieu first, and afterwards Mazarin, 
monopolised all favour and influence, he resolved to obtain it by 
opposition. He had commenced that course in the last reign, as 
one of the secret advisers of the Duke of Orleans in one of his 
many plots against the great cardinal ; but when the conspiracy 
failed, he had been crafty enough or lucky enough to avoid giving 
Richelieu, who certainly would not have spai-ed him, reason to 
suspect how deeply he was concerned in the duke's machinations. 
It was less dangerous to attack Mazarin ; and the parliament was 
a more trustworthy ally than the ever wavering and treacherous 
Orleans ; and de Eetz, with singular address and boldness availed 
himself of the opportunity which accident threw in his way to 
perform an action which to the excited populace bore the appear- 
ance of putting himself in an attitude of direct defiance to the 
minister ; while, if the court should prove too strong, it would be 
easy to represent it as the discharge of a duty imperative on one of 
his clerical profession and affice. His house was close to the 
scene of tumult, and, seeing from the window the man whom the 
marshal had shot lying in the agonies of death, he at once de- 
12 -^ ° 



242 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 164S. 

scended into the street, -wearing his episcopal rochet, and, with his 
crucifix in his hand, knelt down in the gutter to administer to the 
sufferer the last rites of the Church. His charitable deed was 
hailed with acclamations hy the mob ; it gave him an influence 
which he never afterwards lost with them, and which was power- 
ful enough even to enable him to protect the marshal from their 
fury, whom previously they had been threatening to murder, and 
who believed and acknowledged that he owed his life to the co- 
adjutor's exertions. As yet the discontent might probably have 
been appeased ; but Mazarin's want of appreciation of the feel- 
ings of tlie citizens, and the queen's hasty temper and indig- 
nation at the insults which she conceived to have been offered 
to herself as regent stood in the way. The cardinal sneered 
at the coadjutor's representations of the dangerous posture of 
afl'airs, though they were fully supported by de la Meilleraye ; 
and the queen, in her rage, condescended to threaten him with 
personal violence. He was more amused than terrified at the 
menace ; but when, in the evening, he received a warning fi'om de 
la Meilleraye that she was thinking of arresting him, he thought 
it time to stand on his guard. He replied quietly to the marshal's 
messenger that he saw that the court was resolved to destroy the 
•people ; that he was resolved to save them ; and that by noon the 
next day he would be master of Paris. He kept his word. He 
had agents of all classes ready to do his bidding. At his instiga- 
tion, the militia poured out to anticipate the royal guards in the 
occupation of the most conmianding positions ; the citizens, fol- 
lowing the example set in the wars of the League, began to erect 
barricades : a constant resource of the disaffected in all the troubles 
which, in the last century, have agitated that most unquiet and 
unfortunate citj^ By midday 1,200 such barriers blocked up almost 
every thoroughfare ; and were protected by an armed guard, not in- 
deed always of men, but children of six years old were seen brandish- 
ing daggers, and women were beating the drums, and striving to 
their utmost to emulate the ardour of their stouter relatives. 

Even the queen felt that de Retz was master of the situation, 
and condescended to beg him to act as a peacemaker and to restore 
tranquillity. If she would have made him governor of the city, 
he would have been glad enough to undertake the part which she 
desired to assign him ; but, as she refused, he declared that he 
had no such influence as she ascribed to him, though cries of ' Vive 
le Coadjuteur' were much more frequent in the streets than those 
of ' Vive le Roi ' ; but he had still ends of his own to gain, and he 
thought it necessary to their attainment to humble the court by 
showing it its utter helplessness before an excited people. The 
disoi'ders increased. The queen did condescend so far as to release 
Broussel, and for a moment Paris was quieted ; but, at the same 



i.D. 1648.] CONDE SUPPOIITS THE COURT, 243 

time, she took measures to chastise those who had brought her to 
this humiliation. She quitted Paris to put herself out of the reach 
of any renewal of the outbreak, and she sent orders to Conde to 
hasten to join her with some picked regiments. He came ; but at 
first it was far from being certain that his arrival would strengthen 
the court. Though a brave, and, to a certain extent, a skilful 
soldier, he had no other good quality. He was rapacious, trea- 
cherous, and cruel 5 moreover, in the present quarrel he was not 
gi-eatly inclined to espouse either side, and could not be depended 
on to adhere to the party to which he might at first attach him- 
self. If he had a great contempt for lawyers, he had a positive 
hatred for Mazarin ; and one of his first steps on reaching the 
metropolis was to hold a long conference with de Retz, in which 
lie agreed to co-operate with him to effect the dismissal of the 
minister. But he and the coadjutor were too like one another to 
agree long. Presentlj', it occurred to him that, as a prince of the 
blood royal, it did not become him to disturb the crown ; he gave 
in his adhesion to the court, inducing the Duke of Orleans to 
support it likewise ; and prepared to menace the parliament with 
war, if not actually to commence operations. Nothing could more 
fully have corresponded with the coadjutor's secret wishes. He 
was not without allies in the royal family itself, for Conde had 
quarrelled with his brother the Prince de Conti, and with his 
brother-in-law the Due de Longueville, who, with many wealthy 
nobles, now made common cause with, de Eetz ; and confident in 
such leaders, the parliament at once proceeded to measures of open 
rebellion. They passed a resolution banishing Mazarin ; who, in- 
deed, had openly violated a law which had been passed in the 
last reign at the downfall of the Concini, and which had made it 
a capital offence in any foreigner to become a minister of state ; 
they raised troops and taxes, seized the money in the royal trea- 
sury, and appointed the Prince de Conti ' generalissimo of the 
array of the king under the orders of the parliament,' as if the 
flimsy veil of this title would disguise the fact of their being in 
revolt against the king himself. 

Once more civil war had begun. It is difficult to speak seriously 
of what the very actors could not think seriously at the time when 
they were engaged in it. We have full accounts of the whole 
rebellion, both from de Retz himself, and from one who, though a 
lady, and a royal princess, bore a not unimportant part in some of 
its most stin-ing scenes, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, daughter of 
the Duke of Orleans, and their language shows that throughout they 
looked on the whole series of transactions as a good jest, as a farce 
in which the scenes might be shifted, and the actors might change 
their parts at pleasure. According to the coadjutor's description of 



244 MODEKN HISTOKY. [a.d. 1649. 

the court on the very first evening when he accompanied de la 
Meilleraye to the queen's presence, all including himself, were 
acting; Mazarin, feigning confidence, the queen, assuming an air 
of calmness, while the one was frightened out of his wits, and 
the other was secretly boiling over with indignation, were not 
counterfeiting more than he himself, who was professing friendship 
to them, and complete innocence of all plots. And now, when 
the chiefs of the revolt, preparing, for instant action, assembled 
daily in the apartments of Madame de Longueville, which had 
become the head quarters of the parliamentary staff; her chamber, 
crowded as it was with high-born nobles, train-band captains, 
lawyers, and fine ladies, all equally loud in giving, and all almost 
equally competent to give their opinion on the line of conduct to be 
pursued ; and resounding, as it did, sometimes with the clang of 
arms and trumpets, and sometimes with fiddles and dances, pre- 
sented a spectacle, as it struck him, oftener described in novels 
than seen in real life. And it is equally, if not far more difficult 
to form a correct idea of the rebellion, both because every one con- 
cerned in it tried to disguise his motives, so that even the Duke de 
Rochefoucault, intimately as he knew the leaders on both sides 
and deeply implicated in it, as he was himself, despaired of giving 
a true account of it ; and also from the singular way in which, 
under the influence of one caprice or another, in the course of the 
war, almost every one changed his side. Conde, who was at first 
the prop of the court, was afterwards thrown into prison by the 
queen : and subsequently took the command of the rebel army, and 
added treachery to rebellion. The Duke of Orleans did the same. 
Turenne, taking the exactly contrary course, was a rebel at first, 
and afterwards the chief bulwark of the crown against his old 
comrade's treason : and even de Retz, the originator of the whole 
revolt, became an object of such suspicion to his friends that some 
of them proposed his assassination ; while the queen became so far 
reconciled to him that he had the singular honour of concerting 
with her measures for the arrest of Conde, and subsequently 
that of refusing her offer to supersede Mazarin, and to become 
prime minister of the kingdom. But, though these characteris- 
tics of the Fronde may excite a smile, yet in truth the levity with 
with which the different individuals, the highest in the kingdom by 
birth and rank, changed from rebellion to loyalty, and from loyalty 
to rebellion, was the most really dangerous symptom in the whole 
revolt : arguing, as it did, an innate want of principle, a total 
indifference to, and even ignorance of patriotism, good faith, 
honour, duty, of every virtue on which alone the real welfare of a 
nation can be founded. 
At first the revolt seemed likely to terminate as quickly as it 



&.D. 1649.] THE TREATY OF RUEL. 245 

had begun : Conde, -with 12,000 men, attacked liis brotlier Conti's 
troops at Charenton, a village reaching to the very suburbs of the 
city, and easily routed them. And even without such a blow, 
the course of events abroad would have prompted the parliament 
of its. own accord to abandon the contest. When, a few weeks 
before, the queen had released Broussel, she had been principally 
influenced by the prayers and warnings of her sister-in-law, the 
queen of England, who had taken refuge in Paris from the rebels 
who had overthrown her husband's throne : and now, on the very 
day of Conde's victory at Charenton, intelligence arrived of the 
murder of Charles I. ; and the French parliament, which had 
originally been encouraged in its encroachments on the royal 
power by its identity of name with the assembly which had at 
first been led by Hampden and Hyde, now shrank from continuing 
a line of conduct which might lead others to identify them with a 
body stained with such unparalleled guilt. They wished there- 
fore for a reconciliation with the court. The court, recognising 
the fact that their leaders had been too numerous and too power- 
ful for punishment, was willing to pardon what had taken place : 
and peace was signed, after a short negotiation, in March 1649, at 
Euel, a royal palace where the queen was residing at the moment ; 
which was, in fact, little more than an amnesty to all concerned in 
the outbreak, except de Ketz, and the Duke of Beaufort, a grandson 
of Henry IV., who out of personal vanity had put himself forward 
as a patron of the parliament; since both the coadjutor and the 
duke refused to be included in it, declaring that they had been 
guilty of no act requiring pardon. 

Their disclaimer was but a bad omen for the duration of the 
peace thus brought about ; if indeed a treaty which is merely an 
amnesty for past rebellion, does not in itself invite a renewal of it. 
And this treaty of Ruel did not profess to put matters on any new 
footing, for the grievances which had supplied the original pretext 
for complaint had been removed before the parliament took up 
arms. And the personal motives which had really been at the 
bottom of the insurrection were left untouched, if indeed they 
were not embittered by its result ; since most of the leaders were 
disappointed ; though their vexation was chiefly with their own 
party : and some had become inclined to reconcile themselves with 
those with whom they had been previously at enmity, in order to 
avenge themselves on others with whom they had originally been 
united. 

But, if the Fronde in its first outbreak had been a farce, in its 
revival it was more farcical still. Conde soon began to quarrel 
with everyone : with Mazarin, about his niece's marriage : with 
the whole body of the nobles, about matters of court etiquette, 



246 MODEEN HISTOKY. [a.d. 1650. 

taking upon himself to protibit tlieir meeting to discuss some pre- 
tensions tliat they considered themselves entitled to advance ; and 
offending them so deeply that 800 of the most influential of the 
body signed an agreement to resist him by all the means in their 
power ; and, finally, using such language towards the queen her- 
self, because she refused his application for the government of 
Havre, that even the ladies of the court began to urge their mis- 
tress to arrest him. Meanwhile de Eetz was, almost as a matter 
of course, intriguing with everybody ; he and the Duke of Beau- 
fort still ostentatiously retained the title of Frondeur ; and before 
the end of the year, as there was still much distress among the 
community, greatfinancial embarrassment, and consequently general 
discontent, he thought the time was come for renewed action ; and 
he began to plot, or, if that be too dignified a word for what took 
place, to play tricks to exasperate the populace against the 
minister, while Mazarin played counter-tricks to ensure the sepa- 
ration between Conde and the parliament. De Retz found that a 
mere report that Mazarin intended to hang Beaufort obtained no 
credit and produced no effect ; so he tried what might be done by 
a sham attempt at assassination. His secretary, Guy Joly, cut a 
hole in his coat, and gave himself a scratch on his arm, and thus 
prepared drove through the city; as he passed down one of the most 
crowded streets, a man stopped his carriage, and fired through the 
window. He had dropped to the bottom out of harm's way, but he 
went home and took to his bed as a wounded man. On the same 
evening one of Conde's carriages was also fired at, as if in retalia- 
tion, the perpetrators of this attack being secret agents of Mazarin, 
who intended by it to lead the prince to believe that the parti- 
sans of the parliament had tried to get rid of him. Cond^, no 
doubt, knew the truth j but he too pretended to believe in the reality 
of the attack, and lodged a formal complaint against de Retz 
and Beaufort as its authca-s. The coadjutor first ridiculed, then 
easily disproved the charge, and the tribunals dismissed it ; but 
Conde insisted that to acquit anyone of a charge which he brought 
against him was in itself an affront, and demanded that the coad- 
jutor and the duke should confess their guilt and quit the city. He 
not only made himself ridiculous, but he made it safe for the 
court to treat him as if he were powerless ,• and Mazarin crowned 
the series of intrigue and plot by a trick conceived in the finest 
spirit of comedy, making the haughty prince an actor in his own 
imprisonment. Pretending a conviction that the attack upon him 
was a matter of grave state importance, and that the officers of 
justice had discovered the hiding-place of one of the criminals, he 
procured Conde's signature to an order to some of the troops under 
his command to escort some prisoners who were to be arrested to 



A.o. 1650.] THE EEVOLT OF BORDEAUX. 247 

Vincennes. An officer instantly arrested Cond(5 himself, with both 
his brothers, and they were safelji" conveyed to prison by some of 
his own soldiers, in obedience to his own order. 

It may be that this step ensured the eventual renewal of war, 
since it was obviously impossible to keep the princes long in con- 
finement, and certain that Conde, when released, would seek re- 
venge. But it delayed it for a moment, not only by removing 
him, but by dividing the Fronde, which now for a while broke 
into two parties, the Old Fronde, whose chief aim was the over- 
throw of Mazarin, and Avhich still submitted to the guidance of 
de Retz ; and the New Fronde, which put forward as its principal 
object the release of the prinees, and which may be called the 
Ladies' Party, as the war, when it did break out, may be called 
the Ladies' War. For not only were the chief plotters ladies, but, 
after the war had actually broken out, one of the boldest actors 
in it was a lady. Conde's wife, the princess, and her sister, the 
Duchess of Longueville, were justified in agitating for his release : 
and they were joined by the wife of the yoimg Elector Palatine, a 
princess of Italian birth and Italian capacity for intrigue of every 
kind, by a host of other high-born ladies of the same character, or 
want of character, and by Mademoiselle de Montpensier, daughter 
of the Duke of Orleans, who, though herself of spotless reputation, 
combined with them, partly in deference to her father, and still 
more from an energetic restlessness, which prompted her by turns 
to interfere in politics, to manoeuvre for a husband, and to under- 
take the conduct of warlike operations with equal vivacity. As 
the most likely mode to secure her husband's release was to enlist 
some powerful body or city, as yet unconnected with these trans- 
actions, in his behalf, the princess repaired to Bordeaux, where 
the populace espoused her cause with enthusiasm : the municipal 
magistrates were hardly of the same opini(m, but the mob sur- 
rounded their souncil chamber, vowing that no one should quit it 
till they had resolved to take arms for the princes. The dinner 
hour at Bordeaux was twelve o'clock, and regularity at meals has 
at all times been a civic virtue ; still, the mayor and his colleagues 
held out gallantly for some hours later, but by five o'clock they 
were famished into a surrender, passed the vote demanded of 
them, and put the city into a state of defence. It was too im- 
portant a place to be permitted to remain in a state of revolt : so in 
August ]Marshal de la Meilleraye invested it with 11,000 men, and 
for a while those who had won it to their cause toiled manfully to 
preserve it. The princess pawned her jewels and melted down 
her plate to provide funds: her ladies worked at the ramparts, 
carrying earth in baskets trimmed with Oonde's colours, while the 
Dukes de Bouillon and de la Rochefoucault, who had planned the 



248 MODERN HISTORY, [a.d. 1651. 

•works -which they were executing, brought them trays of fruit and 
sweetmeats ; but, after a few weeks, a kindred cause to that which 
had forced the city to embrace their party, led it to abandon them. 
The magistrates had become reliels in August to get their dinners: 
in September the vintage commences iu that district, and they 
became eager for peace to procure leisure to make their wine. De 
Retz, as one who had no concern in the struggle, mediated be- 
tween them and the court ; and before the end of the month an 
amnesty was granted, and Bordeaux returned to its duty. 

Mazarin was not relieved from perplexities by this failure of the 
insurrection in that great city ; in truth, it added to them, by show- 
ing the leaders of the New Fronde that they could not effect their 
objects single-handed, and thus leading them to coalesce with the 
Old Fronde. The union was for a while delayed by their 
jealousy of de Retz; but the conviction of its necessity for their 
common interests gradually prevailed over merely personal feel- 
ings. By January 1651, all points of difference were arranged be- 
tween them ; and, as one solid party, they now combined their 
efforts, demands, and exertions, insisting with equal earnestness 
on the release of the princes and on the dismissal of the minister 
who kept them in prison. It had been a wise act in Mazarin to 
show his power by arresting them ; it was very impolitic to detain 
them so long. The spirit of Conde himself had been so lowered 
by confinement that he repeatedly authorised his friend the Duke 
de la Rochefoucault and his sister to promise lasting fidelity to 
the court for the future as the condition of his liberation ; and the 
cardinal had had several opportunities of yielding in such a way 
as to give his liberation the appearance of a favour which it was 
at his discretion to grant or to vdthhold. But now the two Frondes 
had hardly coalesced when d'Orleans openly joined them ; and, con- 
temptible as he was in character, his position as the king's uncle, 
and as lieutenant-general of the kingdom, gave him such weight, 
that Mazarin saw that it was beyond his power to keep his prisoners 
any longer in confinement; though he perceived at the same time 
that their liberty was incompatible with his own continuance in 
office. To give their liberation something like an appearance of a 
voluntary act of grace on his part, he repaired himself to Havre, to 
which city he had transferred them some time before, and an- 
nounced to them their release by word of rnouth ; and then pro- 
ceeded to show his sense of his own position and his own danger by 
fleeing to Cologne ; by this virtual resignation of his office saving 
his royal mistress the pain of dismissing him. 

He did not, indeed, intend or expect to remain long in exile, either 
from the country or from the government. His favorite proverb 
was, ' Time and I against any two.' And he had little doubt that, 



A.D. 1651.] MUTUAL JEALOUSIES OE THE LEADERS. 249 

as enmity to himself had been the chief cement which had united 
the lecaders of the diil'erent parties, his absence would revive their 
mutual jealousies. But for a moment his flight encouraged the 
parliament, and even de Eetz, who had generally been cautious 
not to render the breach between the court and himself irrecon- 
cileable, to adopt measures of an unusually decided character. In 
obedience to an order signed by the Duchess of Orleans, in her 
husband's name, de Eetz had once more set the militia in motion, 
and had seized the gates of Paris, in order to prevent the queen 
from leaving the city with the young king, and, as it was appre- 
hended that she designed to do, rejoining Mazarin in the pro- 
vinces, while the parliament passed a resolution that henceforth 
no cardinal should be admissible into the council of state. Both 
steps were in the highest degree impolitic : the seizure of the 
city gates was an attack upon the freedom of the king himself, 
which struck many of the Frondeurs themselves with horror j and 
the resolution of the parliament was felt as an insult to the whole 
body of the clergy, who were not only far more numerous than 
the lawyers, who composed the parliament, but infinitely more 
closely connected with the aristocracy of the kingdom. That the 
parliament should ever have passed it may perhaps be taken as a 
proof that their champion, de Retz, who by this time felt assured 
of speedily obtaining the cardinal's hat, had no expectation of the 
lead in the adrninistration being offered to himself ; but, as no one 
ever paid the slightest attention to the vote, it would hardly have 
been worth recording at all, had it not been for the patriotic view 
of their own position which the whole body of the French clergy 
took in protesting against it. Ultramontane principles, as they 
are now called, had no root in their body at that time. They de- 
clared that ' the oath which the cardinals took to the Pope was 
posterior and subordinate to that which they had previously taken 
to the king and to the country j they were citizens of France 
before they were princes of the Church, and therefore,' they 
argued, 'it was cruel to wish to keep their talents in the shade, 
and to deprive them of the privilege of serving the state.' 

Mazarin's anticipations that his foes would quarrel among them- 
selves were speedily verified. Each knew the others too well not 
to be suspicious of them. D'Orleans believed that Conde planned 
wresting his office of lieutenant-general of the kingdom from him : 
Conde suspected Orleans of having advised that he should be again 
arrested. De Petz feared, or pretended to fear, that both were 
leagued for his destruction ; and, adopting a plan which he him- 
self, in his Memoirs, calls ' a stage trick,' he announced his purpose 
to retire from political life, and for the future to confine himself to 
the discharge of his spiritual duties ; while, at the same time, he 




250 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1651. 

made public proclamation of his fear of violence, by surrounding 
his house with a body of troops. 

' He knew who were his enemies : he had little idea of the pre- 
'ierment which some whom he ranked among them destined for 
him; and was, in all likelihood, completely surprised when, by 
Mazarin's advice, the queen offered him the post of prime 
minister ; though, as he never underrated his own capacity, he 
probably felt no doubt at all of his fitness for it. So entirely, 
however, was he taken by surprise, that at first he did not know 
whether to accept or refuse the offer. He so far entered into the 
views with which the queen pressed the offer upon him, that he 
undertook to detach Orleans from Conde, who was the principal 
object of the fears of both queen and cardinal, and wrote 
pamphlets against the prince, to which Cond^ replied by hiring a 
scribbler of the day, named Montardet, to libel him ; but he 
refused to be reconciled to Mazarin himself, not because he had 
any irreconcileable quarrel with him, but because the appearance 
of hostility to him was indispensable to the maintenance of his 
influence with his party. To dwell further on the miserable 
intrigues which occupied the ensuing months would be profitless 
and wearisome. Eventually, de Eetz refused the queen's offers, 
though far beyond his original ambition ; while Conde's hostility 
to the court, the fruit of pique and an overweening pri-^e, which 
thought no concession or reward equal to his merit, grew gradually 
more and more decided: and at one time it seemed as if the queen, 
still separated from her counsellor and friend, if not her lover, 
Mazarin, would have both Conde and Turenne to cope with at 
once ; for that great soldier, though loyal at heart, scrupulous in 
observing his engagements, and never straying from the path of 
duty without painful stings of conscience, was deeply entangled 
with Madame de Longueville, and for love of her had almost 
thrown in his lot with the Fronde : but, though we do not know 
how it was effected, the queen did at last secure his adhesion, and 
to his military skill the eventual triumph of the royal cause was 
owing. Of Orleans it is unnecessary to speak : always false, trea- 
cherous, and cowardly, these vices seemed, if possible, to grow 
upon him ; so that even de Eetz, who had greater influence over 
him than anyone, could not rouse him to any decided or manly 
line of conduct. The more he was pressed to take an open part, 
the more pusillanimous he grew ; sometimes he would walk up 
and down his room whistling for hours, sometimes he would go to 
bed and declare himself too ill to think of business : and it would 
have been utterly unimportant which side he espoused, if his 
daughter had not decided for him, and acted in his name : and in 
the war which ensued her masculine vigour of mind and body 



A.i). 1652.] LOUIS XIV. COMES OF AGE. 251 

presents lis with the most curious episode in the whole history of 
the Fronde. 

At last, in the winter of 1651, Conde raised the standard of 
civil war, aggravating his treason by making it in formal alliance 
with the Spaniards, the inveterate enemies of his country; and 
the time which he selected was a remarkable outrage upon the 
French notions of propriety, since it was the month in which 
Louis attained his majority; and rebellion against a king in the 
personal possession of his authority had, by some curious process 
of logic, always been accounted among the French nobles a far 
greater crime than rebellion against a regent. It almost appeared 
as if he designed to give his treason the appearance of a personal 
affront to Louis : for he ostentatiously quitted Paris a day or two 
before the king held the Bed of Justice ^ to declare his attainment 
of his majority, at which the attendance of all the princes of the 
blood was an acknowledged duty. Being governor of Guienne, he 
selected Bordeaux as the point at wliich to commence his opei-a- 
tions ; but he soon ascertained that his rebellion would be a failure. 
His union with the foreign enemy had indisposed all classes to sup- 
port him ; nor did it benefit him when it became known that he 
had sought another ally still more distasteful to all Frenchmen of 
loyalty than the Spaniard; endeavouring to secure his friendship 
by the sacrifice of both his own and the national honour. He 
sent an agent to Cromwell, a man hateful to all Frenchmen as the 
murderer of their princess's husband, to solicit his friendship, and 
to otfer, as the_ price of the assistance of a body of British troops, 
that he would turn Protestant, and would assist the English to 
recover Calais. But the English usurper was well acquainted 
with the internal politics of the Continental States, and was a 
shrewd judge of character. He was not inclined to trust one 
whom, as he learnt, none of his own countrymen trusted ; and his 
comment on his offer to his own friends was that Conde was a 
fool and a chatterer, and was betrayed by his own followers to 
Mazarin. But not only did Conde fail in attaining his object, but 
his revolt, conducted as he conducted it, brought about the result 
which of all others he least desired, the restoi-ation of Mazarin. 
The hatred of the foreigners whom he made, or sought to make, 
his friends so completely effaced the unpopularity of the foreigner 

1 A Bert of Justice was an a.=sem- edicts which the parliament resisted ; 

blage of all the chambers of the par- siuce it was a rule of practice ad- 

liament in the king's presence, for mitted by themselves that they had 

the performance of some act of more no power to raise any discussion in 

than usual importance or solemnity, the king's presence, or to refuse 

The most common motives for hold- instant compliance with any order 

ing one during the recent reigns had which he in person deliverfd. to 

been to compel the registration of them. 



252 MODEKN HISTORY. [a.d. 1652. 

whom he had denounced as his enemy that the carduml at once 
ventured to return to France ; raised a considerable body of troops 
at his own expense to reinforce the royal army, and imperceptibly 
resumed the government of the state. Not that he did this 
without reawakening a strong show at least of opposition. The 
parliament denounced him, and passed a Tote of outlawry against 
him, which, however, was of no real validity j and Orleans, join- 
ing in the denunciations of him, showed a greater inclination than 
before to support Conde so far as he could aid him, without com- 
promising hiuiself. But the object of the prince, and of those 
who thought that they had most influence with Orleans, was to 
make him compromise himself; for, without his open co-operation, 
the great city of Orleans, which was the only place of importance 
to the south of Paris at all inclined to favour Conde, and which 
Turenue was now marching to attack, would inevitably be lost to 
their cause. In the spring of 1652, the citizens themselves had 
requested of the duke directions for their conduct, professing their 
A\'illingness either to submit to the king's army or to resist it, as 
he might command ; and he had never been in such perplexity ; 
as it seemed impossible for him to avoicl declaring himself on one 
side or the other : yet even out of this he flattered himself that 
he found a way of escape. He went to bed, and sent his daughter 
to the city to manage its afl^irs for him at her own discretion. 
She was delighted with the errand. She loved authority and ex- 
citement; and, having generally some project of lo^e or marriage 
iu her head, she had recently adopted the idea that, if she should 
find that she could not obtain the hand of the knng, as she partly 
proposed to herself, and if Conde's princess were to die, he hinreelf 
might suit her for a husband. There was historical precedent, too, 
for the defence of Orleans by a maiden, and she was encouraged by 
the predictions of an astrologer to hope for some extraordinary 
success and credit from the expedition. She at once formed a 
female staff, selecting some high-born ladies of fashion for her 
aides-de-camp, and hastened from Paris. On her way she fell in 
with some regiments which the dukes of Beaufort and Nemours 
had levied for the prince's service, and took them under her own 
command ; though the resolution which throughout she showed to 
enforce the strict rules of military discipline more than once nearly 
embroiled her with the leaders. However, at last she shamed the 
dukes, and terrified their officers into order ; she presided at councils 
of war, and let it be seen that she would have no objection to preside 
at a court-martial. But before she arrived at Orleans, Turenne, 
coming up from the other side, had arrived equally near to it; and 
the magistrates, seeing nothing but danger from an open adoption 
of either party, desired to save the city by a profession of neu- 



i.D. 1662.] MDLLE. DE MONTPENSIER AT ORLEAKS. 253 

trality, and sent the princess a message that they could not adnii^ 
her ; but that, if she would plead illness and halt, they would 
refuse the marshal entrance, and, when he had passed on, would 
then gladly receive her and her army within their walls. She 
would not condescend to reply to such a proposal : but, not having 
inherited her father's aptitude for sudden maladies, she marched 
rapidly on, and, with a small body-guard, presented herself at the 
gates, and summoned the magistrates to open them. As they 
gave no signs of any inclination to obey, she presently engaged a 
crowd of bargemen to break down a portion of the wall where an 
old gateway, which had been blocked up, opened on the river. 
They quickly made a hreach ; and, having ferried her across the 
water, lifted her into a chair, and bore her in triumph into the 
city, the drums beating, and the populace shouting, 'Long live the 
king and the princes ! but down with Mazarin ! ' 

She was now as absolutely mistress of the city as Joan of Arc 
had been. The magistrates, whose hearts had been with her even 
Avhile their fears had driven them to refuse her admission, now 
yielded willingly to the excitement produced among the citizens 
by her presence, and resigned the whole authority of the city to 
her. She was as ready to govern a town as to command an army. 
She summoned the municipal authorities to the town hall, and 
made them a speech. She introduced some of her regiments into 
the city, and allotted them their duties with military precision : 
laid an embargo on some provisions and horses which had been pur- 
chased for the vojal army ; and, in a few hours, put the whole 
place in such a state of defence, and excited so unanimous an 
enthusiasm in all classes, that the royal commanders, when they 
came in front of the city, could see no prospect of reducing it, 
except by a protracted siege, for which thej'' had neither time nor 
means ; and forbore to attack it. She was rather disappointed, as 
she would have liked nothing better than to lead her troops into 
action : but she consoled herself with the idea that a battle might 
have deranged her matrimonial plans, and with sending a message to 
the queen that, if her majesty's object were peace, the best way 
to secure it would be to give her the king for a husband. Anne 
preferred withdrawing her army. Mademoiselle sent hers to 
pursue it ; remaining herself in Orleans, where, though half her 
time was taken up in laughing over her late exploit, dancing and 
revelling, the other half was spent in making sensible and humane 
arrangements to repair the injuries which the poorer citizens had 
sustained. And it must be recorded, to the honour of her prudence 
and ability, that she fully met all tlie demands of this self-imposed 
duty, and provided pay for her troops, without touching the large 
sums which were in the hands of the receivers of the king's taxes, 



204 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1652. 

and which those around her urged her to appropriate, .is, in other 
towns, Conde's officers had seized them without scruple. Her 
reply was, that she had always been accustomed to think it a duty 
to render to Otesar the things which were Caesar's : and she acted 
in the spirit of this answer, with such firmness, that, throughout 
her stay in the city, the royal revenues were collected for the king's 
use with as great regularity as in any place held by any of his own 
governors or garrisons. 

Mademoiselle, La Grande Mademoiselle, as she was often called, 
had thus shown herself the only partisan on whose zealous co- 
operation Conde could really depend : though, while the king could 
obtain his taxes from Orleans, the keeping his troops from entering 
that city did the prince hut nominal service. But midsummer had 
hardly passed when he had to trust to her for his personal safety. 
And again she came to his aid, mingling as before a great deal of 
active humanity, and good sense with her old way ward headstrong 
fancy for rebellion for rebellion's sake, without a single object 
which she wished to obtain herself, and without the least desire 
to assist those of whom she ccmstituted herself the ally in the 
attainment of them. By the beginning of July, Conde, gradually 
driven northwards, and hemmed in on all sides, was forced to ac- 
knowledge to himself, that his only hope lay in procuring the active 
support of the Parisians. But, when he reached the capital, he 
found to his dismay not only that the parliament, in spite of all 
its factious disloyalty, so detested his junction with the Spaniards, 
that not even against Mazarin would they co-operate with him : 
but that de Retz had to a great extent alienated Orleans from 
him, and that his army would be refused admittance into the city. 
He learnt, too, that Turenue was hastening towards Paris, to 
attack him with a force far superior to his own : and, in fiict, he 
had hardly time to take up a position in the suburb of St.-Antoine, 
where the citizens a short time previously had thrown up some 
entrenchments, before Turenno arrived and prepared to force him to 
a battle, A terrible fight ensued ; Conde, exerting himself with 
even more than his usual energy and intrepidity, did all that per- 
sonal heroism could effect to balance the inequality of his numbers : 
but Turenne was as brave as he, and far more skilful : the prince was 
evidently overpowered, and seemed in imminent danger of being 
entirely destroyed. Once more Mademoiselle de Montpensier came 
to his aid. Her father was in his palace at the Luxembourg, 
trembling at the sound of the battle : he professed to be too ill 
even to go down to the walls, and see what was going on : and, 
when she begged him, for shame's sake, to give some colour to his 
excuse by going to bed, he was too terrified even for that, but 
paced up and down his apartment, whistling as usual. At last, 



&.D. 1652.] FEROCITY OF CONDE'S FOLLOWEES. 255 

filie obtained an order from hiiu, in his capacity of lieutenant- 
general of the kingdom, enjoining the magistrates to allow the 
prince's baggage to pass through the city ; and, in spite of their 
fear of committing themselves with the king who had just sent 
them commands of an opposite character, she compelled them to 
obey it : she called out some companies of militia ; saw the gates 
opened for the baggage, and then took her way to the ramparts of 
the Bastille, and, having ordered the guns to be loaded, calmly 
surveyed the field of battle with her opera-glass : and presently, 
when Oonde's defeat became more decided, in defiance of the king's 
order, she admitted his broken regiments also into the city, and 
opened fire upon Turenne's battalions as they pressed upon them 
in their retreat. 

Conde's situation was now desperate ; and never did despair 
lead a reckless man to more unprovoked or more atrocious crime. 
Because the town council, though consenting to give him and his 
army a momentary asylum, refused to join themselves to his cause, 
and to plunge the city into rebellion, which his very need of their 
assistance proved to be hopeless, he roused the mob against them, 
by declaring that the council was filled with partisans of Mazarin : 
and the rabble, understanding his denunciations as a hint to attack 
them, at once crowded round the council hall, uttering ferocious 
threats, and firing through the windows. It was in vain that 
some of the members, notorious for their zeal in behalf of the 
Fronde, and for their enmity to the minister, sought .to pacify 
them. Their fury increased, fed by its own violence. Some 
ruffians forced their way into the opposite houses, and from them 
fired into the windows of the town hall with greater efiect than 
before : others brought faggots and straw, and kindled them at the 
doors, which had been barred ; and, having thus broken down an 
entrance, rushed in, shouting the name of Conde, and, with dag- 
gers in their hands, threatening all the councillors with instant 
death. The scenes which ensued resembled the sacking of a town. 
The flames, which had destroyed the doors, spread to the rest of 
the building, and from thence to other houses ; threatening even 
to destroy the adjacent church of St. John's. And, while the 
conflagration was raging, the work of murder went on : every 
councillor who fell into the rioters' hands was slaughtered without 
mercy. The very clergy of St. John's, for trying to save some of 
the most sacred ornaments of their church, were pelted with 
stones. Nothing seemed capable of allaying the frenzy of the 
rabble. Conde refused to interfere : it was still more useless to 
expect aid from Orleans : till, fortunately, Mademoiselle de Mont- 
pensier learnt what was going on. She at once repaired to the 
burning hall : and, at great personal risk, checked the further 



256 MOJJEEN HISTOKY. [a.d. 1G52. 

progress of the tumult, saTing all those who had escaped from the 
first fury of the rioters, among whom were the A'eteran Marshal de 
I'Hopital, the governor of the city, and M. Le Fevre, the provost 
of the merchants. They had been, fortunately, able to conceal 
themselves in the closets and cellars of the building, and now 
regained their homes under her protection. 

The massacre of the municipal magistrates, the most shameful 
incident in the whole rebellion, was the forerunner of its extinc- 
tion ; Conde did, indeed, by means of a remnant of the council, 
whom he assembled and terrified into submission to his dictates, 
endeavour to bring the court to a treaty with him, showing at 
the same time how entirely selfish all his own motives were, by 
offering to abandon his associates and to reconcile himself to 
Mazarin, if the king would grant his demands of promotions and 
appointments for himself and his family. But Mazarin knew his 
weakness ; that his whole army was reduced to 2,500 men ; that 
his chief adherents were quarrelling among themselves and with 
him ; and refused to treat. For a week or two Paris was still 
agitated by threats, discussions, and th§ quarrel of angry factions; 
One party paraded the streets, wearing wisps of straw in their 
hats, to intimate their approval of those who had burned the town- 
hall. Another party, eager for peace, assumed for its badge a 
scrap of paper, the material on which treaties are written, to 
indicate their desire for an accommodation. And these daily 
increased, while the champions of war diminished; till, at last 
Conde, seeing no hope for himself any longer in Paris, or even 
in France, fled from the kingdom, and joined the Spanish army in 
the Netherlands. The king returned to Paris, issued a proclama- 
tion declaring him and those who had accompanied him in his 
flight guilty of high treason, and confiscating their estates ; with 
an amnesty, pardoning all those who had been engaged in the 
rebellion, with the exception of one or two of the most powerful 
or most violent of the leaders. And thus, in the autumn of 1652, 
the wars of the Fronde were terminated. 

The Fronde had been professedly aimed principally at the over- 
throw of Mazarin : it left him almost as absolutely master of the 
kingdom as Richelieu had been, and far more secure against any 
future conspiracy than his predecessor could ever feel himself. 
For the coalition against him had embraced so many of the princes 
and chief nobles, that its suppression left him no longer any enemy 
or opposition to dread. Paris and the parliament were, it is true, 
still out of humour and unfriendly : but the parliament was too 
much daunted by its late defeat to provoke another, and Paris was 
not yet mistress of France. De Eetz, indeed, though on this occa- 
sion he had been included in the aranestv, mio-ht still have beeB 



A.D. 1G5S.] TKEATY WITH CROMWELL. 257 

dangerous ; but be bad given tbe queen, who still exercised most 
of tbe autboritj^ of tbe government, deep personal offence : be bad 
pronounced ber fat and coarse-looking, and bis disparagement of 
ber ebarms was so far more unpardonable tban bis organisation of 
rebellion, tbat before tbe end of tbe year be was sent to Vincennes ; 
and bis imprisonment closed up tbe only source from wbicb future 
disturbance to tbe administration of tbe borne government could 
be anticipated. 

Even tbe war in tbe Netberlands, to wbicb Conde's union witb 
tbe Spaniards bad restored a degree of activity wbicb bis victory 
of Lens seemed to bave crusbed out of it, could bardly be said to 
cause Mazarin mucb trouble or anxiety. It was true, indeed, tbat 
tbe recent struggle bad so greatly exbausted tbe resources of tbe 
country, tbat tbe force wbicb could be furnisbed to Tui'enne was 
far inferior in number to tbat wbicb Pbilip of Spain supplied tbe 
prince. But, as bad bappened before, tbe pre-eminence of tbe 
great marsbal's capacity more tban counterbalanced bis numerical 
weakness. In five successive campaigns be constantly bad tbe 
advantage ; crowning bis successes in the sixtb by tbe decisive 
battle of tbe Dunes ; bis defeat in wbicb, however, must not be 
imputed as a disgi'ace to tbe prince, since tbe battle was fougbt in 
spite of bis earnest remonstrances. In it Turenne bad tbe assist- 
ance of a new ally. Cromwell bad disdained to connect bimself 
witb Conde's rashness j but be was not unwilling to obtain an 
influence on tbe Continent, and to distract tbe attention of tbe 
English from bis attacks on their own liberties by triumphs over 
foreign enemies : while Mazarin was not scrupulous in tbe offers 
with which be tempted bis alliance, and promised concessions 
neither compatible witb tbe interests of France nor with his sove- 
reign's honour. He agreed to give up Mardyk and Dunkirk to 
England, if by English aid Turenne could wrest them from tbe 
Spaniards ; and to remove the English royal family from France, 
though tbe English queen was Louis's aunt, and the English 
princes his cousins. He little thought when he made these dis- 
honorable stipulations how near at band were Cromwell's death 
and tbe restoration of Charles II. to his throne ; though eventually 
tbe cession of Dunkirk, which followed on the battle of the 
Dunes, did become advantageous to French interests, the sub- 
sequent restoration of that town greatly contributing to tbe down- 
fall of tbe English minister whose patriotism and honesty were 
the greatest obstacle to Louis's designs of enslaving and dishonor- 
ing both king and kingdom. 

Mazarin was throughout eager for tbe restoration of peace, 
which was even more desirable for Spain tban for France ; and, as 
the young king grew up to manhood, tbe arrangement of a mar- 



258 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 16G0. 

riage for liini facilitated the attainment of his object, -while it 
afforded the cardinal an opportunity of showing himself in an un- 
usually favorable light. In money matters he had made himself 
conspicuous above all others, even in that rapacious age, for a 
grasping and covetous disposition. But, in selecting a wife for his 
sovereign, he shov^ed himself superior to selfish considerations. 
He not only had it in his power to direct Louis's choice in any 
direction, but it was notorious that, if he did not himself oppose 
his inclinations, that choice would lead to the aggrandisement of 
his own family, since Louis had been greatly attracted by the 
charms of his niece, Maria Mancini, and was known to have spoken 
of her as his intended queen ; and, had the cardinal only let things 
take their course, such she would have been. But Mazarin con- 
sidered that such a match would be a degradation of the king and 
an injury to the kingdom : and he resolved to prevent it. He 
spoke to Louis himself with a plainness and resolution foreign to 
his general character, declaring that it would be a disgrace to him- 
self as minister, and an abuse of the confidence which the queen 
mother had always placed in him, if he were to suffer him thus to 
lower his dignity; and that, as guardian of his niece, he would 
stab her with his own hand rather than permit it. It was not 
without tears that Louis yielded, and consented to accept a wife 
of more royal lineage. But, when he had once obtained his con- 
sent, Mazarin took care not to give the predilection thus expressed 
any opportunity of returning ; and coupled with his proposals of 
peace to the Spanish court an offer of his sovereign's hand to the 
Infanta Maria Teresa. Such a termination of the war seemed . 
honorable to both parties : and to France it was not without solid 
advantages also, since she gave back but few of her conquests, and 
retained those which she had made in Artois, and along her 
northern frontier, as well as Roussillon in the south. And 
Mazarin did not draw back when he found that Philip conceived 
his personal honour concerned in making the pardon of Cond6 and 
his restoration to all his former honours a condition of the treaty. 
In June 1660, the marriage took place ; Louis accompanying it 
by a formal renunciation of all pretensions to the Spanish crown 
which, through it, might devolve on him or his heirs, in the event 
of the death of the Infanta's brothers, who were both infants. 
Even at the time of his making the renunciation, he never designed 
to be bound by it ; and his conduct throughout his whole reign 
proved him so entirely destitute of honour and good faith, that his 
subsequent violation of the engagement he thus entered into is in 
no degree remarkable. But it is a singular coincidence that, only 
three months before, by his unprovoked invasion and annexation 



A.T>. 1G61.] DEATH OF MAZAEIN. 259 

to his own dominions of the little principality of Orange, he should 
have made an irreconcileable enemy of its prince; who, though as yet 
only a child, and lord of one of the pettiest territories in Europe, 
became subsequently sovereign of one of the mightiest kingdoms, 
and able to compel him to a renewal, in its most important points, 
of the compact, to which, when he first entered into it, he had no 
design of paying the slightest attention. 

Mazarin's health had long been breaking ; for years he had been 
a martyr to the gout ; latterly dropsy had contributed to wear out 
a constitution enfeebled by a constant application to his ofScial 
duties ; and at the beginning of 1 661 he died. His talents had 
been of a lower order than those of Richelieu ; he may be said 
rather to have outwitted his adversaries than to have overborne 
them ; to have escaped from difficulties rather than to have sur- 
mounted them. Yet he cannot be denied to have been a success- 
ful minister, both for himself and for his adopted country. He 
triumphed over the most formidable combination that ever laboured 
for the downfall of any minister, and in spite of princes, nobles, 
parliament, and fine ladies, preserved to the end of his life a power 
which, for the last nine years, was absolute and unresisted. And 
he terminated a long war by a treaty which greatly strengthened 
France in power and influence. Though rapacious, and, as it is 
hardly unfair to infer from the enormous wealth he left behind him,' 
unscrupulous as to the means of gratifying his rapacity, he could 
yet appreciate virtue and integrity in others. Indeed, in one 
quality of great importance in a chief minister, it is impossible to 
deny him the very highest praise. In discerning eminent abilities 
in others, in appreciating them correctly, and in training and em- 
ploying them for the service of the state he displayed a most ex- 
cellent judgment, and an admirable freedom from jealousy. When 
he died, Le Tellier was, what we may term, the home secretary ; 
Lyonne was at the head of the foreign office : two statesmen sur- 
passed by none of their contemporaries in fitness for these posts, 
in talent, in information, and genuine zeal for the public welfare. 
Both owed their rise to Mazarin's penetration ; and, if we cannot 
ascribe the same conscientious honesty to Fouquet, whom he had 
made superintendent of finance, it cannot be denied that that 
statesman also was endowed with very eminent capacity, with 
fertility of resource, with courage and firmness ; in fact, with the 
qualities requisite to enable a minister to raise a revenue from a 
country impoverished by a long course of disorders. He estimated 

' Voltaire affirms that Mazarin left francs), a sum equal to eight millions 
behind him about 200 millions (of of English money. 



260 



MODERN HISTOEY. 



[a.d. 1661, 



still more highly the qualities of his own private secretary; and 
the general verdict of posterity which ranks Colbert amongst the 
greatest and most virtuous ministers of his country, must, in can- 
dour, allow no trifling merit to the statesman who brought him 
into notice, and recommended him to the king as the one of his 
subjects the most worthy of his confidence.' 



1 The authorities for this chapter, 
besides the regular Histories, are the 
Memoirs of Madame de Motteville, 



Mdlle. de Montpensier, Cardinal de 
Eetz, Conde', the Due de Rochefou- 
cault, and the Esprit de la Fronde 



A.B. 1661.] COLBERT SUCCEEDS MAZAEIN. 261 



CHAPTER XIL 
A.D. 1661. 

MAZAEIN had given Louis good counsel wlien he recom- 
mended him to repose his chief trust in Colbert. He had 
previously given him another piece of advice, which would have 
been also good if Louis had been capable of correctly miderstand- 
ing it, and qualified by talents and information to carry it out. 
Conscious that he had exercised the entire authority of the state 
without control, as, in fact, his sovereign's youth had rendered it 
almost inevitable that he should, and that therefore it had been in 
his power to misuse it, to the danger and injury of both king and 
kingdom, if he had been so inclined, he had urged him never 
again to place any other minister in the high position which he 
had himself enjoyed, but to take upon himself the principal 
direction of affairs. There could be no question that ever since 
the installation of Richelieu in ofEce the power of the minister 
had overshadowed the legitimate authority of the sovereign ; 
and that it becomes a constitutional prince, and is still more 
indispensable to an absolute monarch, who would preserve the 
respect of his subjects, to acquaint himself carefully with all 
that relates to the government of his people, with their feelings, 
their interests, and with the degree in which those are consulted 
by the chief officers to whom he entrusts the administration of 
affairs. But Louis interpreted the cardinal's counsel as a recom- 
mendation to take under his own superintendence the details 
of each separate department, and to regard those who had 
hitherto held the chief posts in each as so many private secre- 
taries to provide for the execution of the arrangements which 
he himself should make in every branch of his service, and with 
respect to every particular transaction. And this view of the 
advice which had been given to him coincided with his notions 
of kingly authority and dignity ; though it is hardly too much 
to say that it betrays an utter incapacity on liis part for compre- 
hending the very nature of government. 

In truth, while no single mind could have discharged the duties 
wliich Louis now announced his intention to take upon himself, it 



262 MODERN niSTOEy, [a.d. 1661. 

would have been difficult to find anywhere a person less qualified 
than himself to manag-e a single department. As he was scantily 
endowed by nature,' a careful education had been even more de- 
sirable for him than it might be for some whose innate quickness 
of apprehension might compensate for a deficiency of early train- 
ing. But, whether, during his childhood, his mother had been too 
much occupied by her duties as regent to pay the necessary atten- 
tion to his education, or whether, from a desire to preserve her 
own authority after he should have arrived at manhood, she had 
designedly neglected it, he had been suffered to grow up in the 
most complete and shameful ignorance. Pie could hardly read or 
write, much less spell. With the past history, the constitution 
and laws of the kingdom he was utterly unacquainted ; and equally 
uninformed as to its present resources, and as to the condition and 
interests of the different classes of his subjects. He even despised 
knowledge of all kinds, merely because he was destitute of it. 
And as no one dared to intimate to him that he was deficient in 
anything, he continued to the last day of his life as ignorant as he 
was at the hour when he first became his own master. To such a 
prince, his late minister's advice, however honestly intended, was 
pernicious. He was, in fact, as completely governed by his minis- 
ters as his mother and himself had been governed by Mazarin, or 
his father by Richelieu ; but he was jealous to the last degree of 
being supposed to be influenced by them ; he was incessantly on 
the watch to disguise their authority from the world, and even 
from himself; and, to show his independence of their advice, he 
would frequently act in express contradiction of it ; guiding his 
opposition to them by such pure caprice that they could never feel 
sure beforehand of obtaining his assent to the most beneficial or 
the most indispensable of their proposals. It was only by the 
grossest flattery, by a pretence of attributing every measure for 
which they were anxious to his suggestions, and of being his 
pupils in the act of government, that they were able to preserve 
their influence in their own departments and to retain their places. 
And any intermission of this servility was so deeply resented that 
throughout his whole reign there were few of his civil servants 
who, after years of faithful and able service, were not dismissed 
with disgrace, while many of them were persecuted, to their 
eventual ruin. 

And his ignorance, gross and ignoble as it was, did not in- 

1 In his own lifetime it was the gence of his ' abilities and acquire- 

fashion of the courtiers, and the meats as a statesman;' but St.-Simcn, 

writers were all courtiers, to extol who knew him wrll, saj'^s, ' L'esprit 

the king's capacity ; and even our du roi etait au-dessous du mediocre.' 

own Macaulay speaks with indul- — Vol. xiii. 13. 



A.D. 1661.] CHARACTEK OF LOUIS. 263 

capacitate liim from exercising a wliolesome influence on the 
government nearly as much as the moral obliquity which led him 
to adopt, on the most important subjects, principles of action alike 
opposed to and incompatible with his personal honour and the 
welfare of his people. So far was he from the feeling of his pre- 
decessor John, that if good faith were banished from all the rest 
of the world it ought to preserve its abode in the breast of princes, 
that he conceived one of the privileges of his royal rank to be, 
that it placed him above the necessity of keeping his word ; that 
it exempted him from all the ordinary obligations of honour ; that 
the more strong and explicit was the language of his promises, the 
slighterwas their validity : in short, that a kingwas absolved from all 
regard to any pledges or engagements he might make, because few 
expected, and fewer still could compel him to observe them. Still 
more mischievous in its eft'ect on the tranquillity and prosperity of 
his subjects was his notion, that the acquisition of territory was 
^ the noblest and most agreeable occupation of kings ' j' and that, 
therefore, the mere probability of being able to attain such an 
object was a suflicient motive for plunging into war with unoffend- 
ing neighbours. On his death-bed he owned that his fondness for 
war had been an error, which his successor would do well to 
avoid ; and few things are stranger than that he should have felt 
and yielded to such an inclination. For, though he professed to 
look on Francis I. as his own model, he was so far from feeling 
the martial ardour which prompted that fiery prince to win his 
spurs by deeds of valour in the field, that he was, throughout his 
life, a notorious coward ; venturing indeed, occasionally, to look 
on at a siege from a safe distance, but never having the courage 
to expose himself on a field of battle ; and, on one occasion, pre- 
ferring to derange Luxembourg's best conceived plans, and to 
deprive his great marshal of an assured victory, rather than re- 
main in a district where there was the least possibility of a hardy 
English regiment forcing its way to a conflict with his body 
guard. 

Such as he was, however, he undertook the task which he 
conceived to have been recommended to him, and applied himself 
to its performance with a methodical industry and preserving 
steadiness of purpose which is the most respectable characteristic 
in his long career ; setting apart a portion of every morning for deli- 
beration with the heads of the diSerent departments, and, wherever 
he might be, rarely permitting any temptation to lead him to violate 
his rule. But earnest and unwearied as his assiduity was, the 
task which he had undertaken was so far beyond his powers, 

' His own phrase in his Historical Memoirs. 



26-4 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1661. 

beyond indeed those of any single individual, that lie could not pre- 
vent tlie different departments from often taking the impress of the 
mmd of their ostensible chiefs : and two of his subsequent minis- 
ters were men of such ability and force of character that it is to 
them that the most important public events which, during the 
next quarter of a century, distinguish the history of France, are 
principally to be attributed. From the king himself proceeded all 
that was ruinous and degrading ; to the example of his personal 
dissoluteness is to be traced the steady growth of gambling, extra- 
vagance, licentiousness, and shamelessness continuing and inflaming 
the demoralisation of the whole people which had been so long in 
progress. In his mistaken vanity originated the new fashion 
which taught all the nobles of the land to consider the court as 
their proper home, and a residence on their estates, and among 
their dependents an exile and a degradation : a habit and feeling 
which contributed more than any other single cause to that 
separation, if not antagonism, of classes to which was owing so 
much of the horror and misery of the Revolution. His merciless 
superstition and bigotry, never more strangely combined with vice 
and profligacy than in his case, renewed the religious perse- 
cutions which desolated some of his fairest provinces, and drove 
thousands of his most virtuous and most useful subjects to enrich 
foreign lands with their ingenious industry. To Colbert and 
Louvois was owing all that tended to either the welfare or the 
credit of the nation. To Colbert, the restoration of the internal 
prosperity of the country ; to Louvois, the victories and the con- 
quests which, by the peace of Nimeguen, rendered France indis- 
putably the most mighty kingdom in the world ; and crowned 
her monarch with a brilliancy of glorj', as well as a solidity of 
power, which no preceding sovereign of France had ever enjoyed 
and to find a parallel for which we should have to look back to 
Charles after Pavia, or Henry after Agincourt. 

The departments of these two ministers were, of course, diflerent, 
yet not more different than their characters. Colbert, the 
minister of finance, was modest, and unassuming ; free alike from 
rapacity and ostentation: avowing himself a follower in the steps 
of Sully, though in some matters entertaining larger, and more 
enlightened views : thinking more of his sovereign's greatness than 
of his own : and, it must be confessed, zealous to promote the 
"prosperity of the kingdom more on account of the extent in which 
it would tend to the magniticence and renown of Louis himself, 
than of the degree in which it would relieve or elevate the lov/er 
classes. But, however mistaken the motive which dictated his 
different measures, the measures themselves were, for the most 
part, eminently judicious and beneficial. One of the greatest evils 



A.D. 1661.] POLICY OF COLBEET. 265 

in the system of government was one which neither Sully nor 
Eichelieu had ventured to attack, the exemption which the nobi- 
lity had always claimed from the payment of many of the heaviest 
taxes: an exemption, which was not only highly injurious to the 
revenue, but which was also mischievous even to the nobles 
themselves, as sowing the seeds of, and fostering the jealousy with 
which they were regarded by all other classes : and one of his first 
steps was greatly to reduce the number of those to whom this immu- 
nity was allowed ; bringing back many thousands of those who of 
late had enjoyed it into the ranks of the taxpayers, and prosecuting 
for heavy fines those who had obtained it by false titles and other 
illegal means. He abolished altogether the duties which had been 
previously imposed on the transit of goods from one province to 
another ; and which had been a most vexatious impediment to their 
industry and trade. And he gave a further stimulus to productive in- 
dustry of every kind by the improvement of all the ordinary means 
of communication ; and especially by one imperishable monument of 
his judgment and energy, the great canal of Languedoc, which, 
meeting the Garonne at Toulouse, where that river is still navigable, 
and proceeding from that point to the western extremity of the 
Gulf of Lyons, thus connects the Mediterranean with the Atlantic. 
His was not, indeed, the mind which planned and executed that 
gigantic work ; but the genius of its engineer Riquet was almost 
as much indebted to the discernment with which Colbert appre- 
ciated his design, and the large-minded liberality with which, in 
spite of the numerous calls made upon his resources, he provided 
means for its execution, as Colbert's fame is now indebted to the 
invention and fertility of Eiquet for the construction of the most 
lasting monument to his glory. He encouraged commerce by a 
series of beneficial regulations : and, in this instance, departing from 
Sully's principles, he encouraged the settlement of French colonies 
in different parts of the world, in America, in the West Indies, 
in Madagascar, and India ; nor were his labours entirely confined to 
peaceful works. In his days the controller of finance was minister 
also of the marine ; and in this department he exerted himself for 
the augmentation of the navy with the same untiring energy that 
he bestowed on tasks more congenial to his disposition. When 
he received his appointment all the arsenals of the kingdom could 
scarcely have sent out a single fleet : when he died he left behind 
him a force rivalling the British navy in numbers, and superior to 
that possessed by any other nation ; and before the close of his 
administration, the French flag began to be seen in seas where 
a quarter of a century before the French name had scarcely been 
heard of ; while the measures which he had taken to secure a con- 
stant supply of crews to man tbo fleet had been so successful, that 
13 



266 MODEKN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1683. 

the number of seamen registered at the different ports amounted 
to 80,000. 

In one point he took Richelieu rather than Sully for his model ; 
and neither the fostering care with which he encouraged the navy, 
nor the ingenuity and boldness with which he augmented the 
revenue, contributed more to Louis's gratification at the time, nor 
have doue nearly so much for his renown with posterity, as the 
liberal protection which he bestowed on the men of genius who 
adorned his reign. Louis himself, as has been mentioned, despised 
learning ; but Colbert, following on a large scale the example 
which Richelieu had set him in his Academy of Literature, founded 
several other academies for dilferent branches of science and art, 
and gave pensions to men of learning and genius, not only with 
princely liberality, but, what is far rarer, with honest impartiality 
and tasteful discrimination. Moliere, Racine, Boileau, La Fon- 
taine, Mezerai, were all recipients of his well selected bounty. And 
those who speak of Louis himself and of his reign with admira- 
tion, are, whether consciously or unconsciously, far more influenced 
by their genius and learning than by the most brilliant exploits of 
Luxembourg or Turenne. For his great services he was ungrate- 
fully requited by his master. So eager was Louis to have it 
thought that his ministers owed everything to himself, that he 
rarely, if ever, employed one of high birth, and that he preferred 
men of moderate talents to those of more exalted abilities. He 
became jealous of the reputation which he saw Colbert was ac- 
quiring. The great minister was no flatterer ; and, as Sully had 
endeavoured to put a limit to Henry's wastefulness, so Colbert at 
times urged upon the king the praises of economy with an earnest- 
ness which Louis, less generous than his grandfather, resented as 
a reproach. He began to treat him with harshness. When 
Colbert had been twenty years in office, his incessant application 
to its duties began to produce its eflect on his constitution : and 
by the beginning of 1683 he became seriously ill, while Louis took 
every opportunity of showing not only complete want of sympathy 
with hij ill-health, but increased dislike of his person. High- 
minded as he was in other matters, Colbert could not support the 
manifest loss of his sovereign's favour with equanimity, and his 
anxiety aggravated his disease. When he was on his death bed, 
Louis wrote him a letter ; but, anticipating nothing but fresh re- 
proaches or sneers from its contents, he declined to open it, 
exclaiming to his attendants, in language which he might almost 
seem to have borrowed from our own Wolsey, ' If I had served my 
God as faithfully as I have served this man, I might long since 
have worked out my salvation ; but now what awaits me?' 

Louvois secretary of state for war, though equally devoted to 



&.T). 1683.J POLICY OF LOUVOIS. 267 

the performance of his official duties, was one of the most haughty, 
arrogant, and domineering of men ; not hesitating to dictate to the 
greatest generals, nor at times fearing even to thwart and to con- 
tradict the king himself. He, too, wished the king to be great, 
but he desired also that with all the world he himself should 
have the credit of having made him so. He would have disdained 
to be thought to follow the example of any predecessor, but in 
truth there had been in Europe no previous example whatever of 
the idea which he had formed of his duties, nor of the manner in 
which he had applied himself to their performance. Under former 
kings, if the officers of the different regiments or divisions satisfied 
their own commander, no one inquired further ; and the com- 
manders, except when under such a king as Henry IV., or such a 
minister as Richelieu, exercised a degree of independence very 
inconsistent with a legitimate subordination or real discipline; 
while former secretaries at war had not dared to exert any autho- 
rity over the highborn nobles, but had limited their duties to the 
furnishing of the tioops with supplies. But Louvois was resolved 
to make the whole army feel itself to be the king's army, and to 
teach every officer in it of every rank that he was responsible to 
the king, or, in other words, to himself, for the strict performance 
of his duties.^ In fact, he introduced a complete revolution into 
the whole military system : no part of its arrangements, whether 
relating to its supplies, its distribution, or its discipline, was, in his 
eyes, independent of his control. And he performed his duties in 
all their vast and novel extent with a completeness almost as ad- 
mirable as his conception of them. He was also something more 
than a great quartermaster or adjutant-general. He had, aboA-e 
any one of his contemporaries, the eye and mind of a statesman ; 
and he did not conceive it to be beyond his province to plan the 
whole outline and scheme of intended operations, to decide in what 
quarters the different armies could be most usefully employed, and 
even how the generals in command should employ them ; though 
in this his overweening confidence at times carried him too far, 
provoking such commanders as Turenne and Luxembourg to appeal 
to Louis against his orders; and giving Louis, jealously glad to 
mortify him, a plea for rendering his great marshals independent 
of his interference. 

The scale on which Louis's wars were carried on would have 

1 *M. Loiivoisdit,!' autre jour, tout clrait I'avoir viie. Monsieur." "Mon- 

liautauM. Nogacct, "Monsicui-,votre sicur, j'y donncrai ordre." "II fau- 

compagnie est en fort mauvais ctat." drait I'avoir donne, il faut pi-endre 

"Monsieur," dit-il, "je ne le savais parti, Monsieur, ou se declarer cour- 

pas." "II faut le savoir," dit M. de tisan, ou s'acquitter de son devoir 

Louvois, " I'avez-vous vue ? " " Non, quand on est ofHcier." ' — llaclame de 

Monsieur," dit Nogacct. " II fan- Sevignc, Feb. 4, 1089. 



268 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1670. 

taxed the talents of any other man to the utmost. No such hosts 
had ever been put in motion hy one sovereign in modern Europe 
as those with which Louis carried on war at the same time in the 
Netherlands, in Franche-Comte, and on the frontiers of Spain. In 
1671 the armies entrusted to Conde, Turenne, and Boiiteville, 
known afterwards as the Marshal duke of Luxembourg, amounted 
to 112,000 men. Yet to maintain them all in a state of efficiency, 
well provided with all the appliances requisite to enable troops to 
support rapid marches and protracted campaigns, was not beyond 
the genius of Louvoisj and, great as was the ability of the 
generals, they were in no slight degree indebted for their triumphs 
and their glory to his intuitive perception of their wants, to the 
fertility of resource with which he supplied them, and to the 
firmness with which he compelled every subordinate officer, civil 
or military, to do his duty. With all his boldness, he was not 
rash ; when, towards the end of his career, the fugitive king 
James, looking to Louis for the aid by which he hoped to re- 
cover his throne, sought to stimulate his ally to invade Eng- 
land, Louvois, alone of French statesmen, saw the hopelessness 
of such an undertaking ; and remonstrated vigorously against it ; 
and, had he lived, it is possible that the country might have 
been saved the greatest disaster that had as yet befallen it since 
the accession of Louis, the overthrow of her fleet at La Hogue, 
and the discovery that even her own harbours could not protect 
its relics from the invincible crews who had put them to flight, 
and who felt that on their own prowess and skill depended the 
safety and the honour of Britain. It must be confessed that 
there were features in his character and parts of his conduct 
which excite very different feelings. He not only at times urged 
his sovereign into wanton and utterly unjustifiable wars, but he 
eagerly seconded the atrocious cruelty with which, in more in- 
stances than one, they were carried on. The imperious orders by 
which Louis compelled Turenne first, and afterwards Duras, to 
ravage the Palatinate ; confounding, in, one common destruction, 
the peaceful villages, the fortified strongholds, and the venerable 
cities sanctified by ancient traditions and centuries of hallowed 
memories; expelling and massacreing the miserable inhabitants, 
till one of the most fertile provinces of Europe was reduced to a 
desert, were aggravated by the minister who would fain have 
extended the ruin more widely than even the tyrant on the throne 
had contemplated; and it was with even greater zest that he 
exerted his ingenuity to devise new methods of persecution by 
which the king might wreak his vengeance on his fellow subjects 
who differed from him in religion. In these matters he was a 
pliant tool, eager to win his master's favour by outrunning his 



A.D. 1670.] LICENTIOUSNESS OF LOUIS. 269 

orders, in anticipation of wLat lie, perhaps not erroneously, believed 
to be bis secret wishes. In one respect alone he resembled 
Colbert ; in the gross ingratitude with which his services were 
requited by his master Louis, though, to mortify Colbert, he 
sometimes extolled Lonvois's financial and economical skill above 
his, did not in reality feel less jealous of him or like him better. 
The minister's peremptory manner and language had raised him 
up a host of enemies among the courtiers ever on the watch to 
take advantage of the king's ebullitions of ill-temper towards him. 
And at last, his zeal for the public service, coupled with a regard 
for the king's personal honour, which he conceived to be at stake, 
brought on him the fixed ill-will of one whose constant access to 
the king made her enmity more formidable than that of all the 
court besides. For many years Louis had scandalised the world 
with a greater shamelessness of proiligacy than even the most 
licentious of his predecessors. He had outi-aged even his own 
female relations, compelling his unmarried cousin, Mdlle. de 
Montpensier, to act as a go-between in his amours,^ and his wife 
to appear in public with two of his mistresses at once, carrying 
her, Madame de la Valliere, and Madame de Montespan, with him 
in his various expeditions to the frontiers, while the wondering 
peasants in the different villages through which they passed gazed 
with amazement on the three ladies, the three queens as they 
called them, in the same carriage.^ But, offended as all but the 
most hardened were at this parade of unparalleled license, for 
that a king should have two titular mistresses at once was a 
novelty even in Paris, they did not feel it to be nearly such a 
degradation of the court as his change of conduct when he fell 
under the dominion of a more artful woman than any of his 
former favorites. Of artifice, indeed, neither of those who have 
been mentioned could justly be accused. Madame de la Valliere 
was too meek, Madame de Montespan too imperious to practise it ; 
but the former, always ashamed of her position, into which she 
seems to have been betrayed by genuine love for Louis as a man, 
had long retired from the court and taken refuge in a convent j 

1 There is not a more curious pas- Memoires de Montpensier, v. 354. 

sage in all the Princess's Memoirs * ' Get epouvantable fracas, qui 

than that in which she relates her retentit avec horreur chez toutes les 

reprimand of the Marquis de Montes- nations, et qui donna au monde le 

pan fur presuming to doubt the king's spectacle nouveau de deux maitresses 

right to seduce the marchioness. 'Je a la fois. II les promena aux fron- 

lui lavai la tete. . . . Je lui lis com- tieres, aux camps, des moments aux 

prendre qu'il manquait de conduite arme'es, toutes deux dans le carrosse 

par ses harangues, dans lesquelles il de la reine. Les peuples accourant de 

melait le roi avec des citations de la toutes parts se montraient les trois 

Sainte licritnre et les peres. . . . Xtiines.'— St.- Simon, vol. xiii. 92. 
II disait quautite de sottises,' &c. — 



270 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1683. 

and the latter "by lier violence, her peevishness, and still more 
perhaps by satiety, had wearied Louis so that he rarely saw her, 
when, in 1683, the queen suddenly died, and a lady who had for 
some time been about the court in a situation which brought her 
into constant contact with the king, saw in her death an oppor- 
tunity for her own elevation which she could not before have 
anticipated. 

In the early part of the reign, Mademoiselle d'Aubign(5, a young 
lady of good family, and great beauty, but very poor, had been 
reduced to marry a young lawyer of the name of Scarron, who had 
gained the patronage of the men of fashion of his day, as the 
author of a number of lively farces, and as a boon companion of 
more wit than propriety. He died while she was still young ; but 
some of her husband's patrons did not regard her with the less 
favour because he was removed : and she was recommended to 
Madame de Montespan as well qualified to be the governess of the 
children whom that lady had borne to the king. Her conduct on 
receiving the offer was curious and characteristic. She was not 
likely to have learned any very sensitive'delicacy from her husband : 
her own especial friends, both before and since his death, were 
among the most abandoned and notorious women in Paris : but, 
on being invited to take charge of the education of illegitimate 
children, she was seized with a sudden scruple ; she could not, she 
said, listen to such a request from their mother; though her 
loyalty would forbid her refusing such a wish if expressed by her 
king. Louis condescended to express his own desire that she 
would undertake the task ; and, as he was fond of the children, and 
constantly visited their nursery, he soon becanie acquainted with 
the brilliant conversational powers of their governess. He in- 
creased a small pension which she had enjoyed since Scarron's 
death : gave her a sum of money, with which she bought a small 
estate called Maintenon : and sent hia favorite architect, Le 
Notre^ to lay out the grounds : so that, in a short time, her influ- 
ence had become notorious to the whole court. "When, in 1680, 
the Dauphin married the Princess of Bavaria, she was appointed 
her lady of the bedchamber ; and she gradually began to feel so 
sure of her influence that she ventured to disparage Madame de 
Montespan to Louis himself. The marchioness's star grew pale, 
to borrow an expression from Madame de Sevigne, before the light 
of this new attraction ; who was, however, three years older than 
the king himself. And so matters went on, for seven or eight 
years, without any positive certainty being arrived at with respect 
to her relations with the king : though few, if any, hesitated to 
put their ovni construction on them. But, by the time the queen 
died, she, being now nearly fifty years of age, had gradually 



&.D. 1691.] LOUIS IVIARRIES MADAME DE MAINTENON. 271 

assumed a tone of strict decorum and devotion ; and though when, 
a day or two afterwards, she threw herself in Louis's way, in such 
ostentatiously deep mourning, and with such a parade of distress, 
that he could not help laughing at her,i it proved a judicious act 
of sympathy, even if it was not appreciated at the time. Not long 
afterwards Louis mai-ried her privately ; and she was left with 
nothing to wish foi', but that he would make public proclamation 
of the act, and allow her to assume the title of queen. 

Her eagerness for this recognition, which could not be called 
imnatural, produced more than one quarrel between the king and 
his ministers, who agreed in looking on such a step as a degrada- 
tion of his royal dignity ; but none opposed it with such vehem- 
ence as Louvois. Learning, on one occasion, that Louis had given 
the lady a distinct promise to own his marriage, he forced his way 
into the king's cabinet, and remonstrated fiercely against his per- 
formance of his engagement : and the scene which ensued, as it 
is painted by St.-Simon, gives us a curious picture of the king's 
meanness and timidity, and of the minister's uncourtierlike plain- 
ness. The king shuffled, prevaricated, and tried to escape into the 
next room, where stood the gentlemen in waiting (listening and 
looking in at this strange scene through a glass door), whose pre- 
sence, he thought, would protect him from the secretary's re- 
proaches. Louvois, who saw his manoeuvre, stopped him, and, 
embracing his knees, compelled him to hear him out ; and, at last, 
drawing his sword, offered it to the king, begging his majesty 
rather to slay him on the spot than to disgrace himself before the 
eyes of all Europe by the avowal of a connection so unworthy of 
him. Before his inexorable servant would release his hold of him, 
Louis, who had already promised him more than once that nothing 
should ever induce him to own his marriage, was forced to repeat 
his promise ; and he kept it : but the lady knew well to whom the 
disappointment of her hopes was owing, and never rested till she, 
in return, had exacted a pledge from Louis to release both her and 
himself from a servant so much inclined to give himself the airs of 
a master. It was not so difficult to keep the king to this engage- 
ment. Even after the minister knew how bitter an enemy he had 
provoked, he disdained to hold his temper under restraint. More 
than once stormy scenes between him and his royal master became 
the talk of the court: till, at last, in ,7une 1691, a severe check 
which the Marquis de Feuquieres, who commanded a division in 

1 ' Madame de Maintenon . . . Queen having died on Friday), ne 

parut aux yeux du roi dans un si put s'empeeher de lui en ' faire 

grand deuU, avec uu air si afflige, quelques plaisanteries.' — Memoires 

que lui, dont la douleur e'tait passe'e de Montpensier, vi. 
(this was on Monday or Tuesday, the 



272 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1691. 

Piedmont, received before Coni, inflamed Louis's anger with the 
secretary at war bej'^ond all bounds. The failure was of no great 
importance ; and Prince Eugene, the Imperial general who had 
baffled the marquis, was a commander before whom no man need 
have been ashamed to retreat. But Louis, up to that time, had 
enjoyed such uninterrupted success in all his military enterprises, 
that he had become unable to endure the slightest interruption to 
it. It was Louvois who had appointed de Feuquieres to the com- 
mand, and he was known to regard him with peculiar favour. And 
it was on Louvois, accordingly, as being most within reach, that 
the king's displeasure, on hearing of his failure, was first vented. 
Louvois was not of a temper to bear violent reproaches from any 
one without defending himself; once more a vehement dispute 
between the king and him ensued : and, when they parted, Louis 
was so much exasperated that he resolved to arrest him the next 
day, and send him to the Bastille. But the next day never came 
for Louvois. He had been as violently enraged as the king; but 
on him it had a different effect : he had hardly reached his house, 
when he was seized with apoplexy, of which he died almost 
instantly : and Louis had the bad taste and vanity to speak of his 
loss as a matter of no importance ; and, while everyone else, even 
those who had the least personal liking for the deceased minister, 
did not dissemble their sense of the greatness of the national loss, 
at a time when it was engaged in formidable wars, both in the 
north and in the south, he proclaimed ostentatiously that the 
enterprise which he had most at heart, the expulsion of the Prince 
of Orange from the British throne, and the restoration of James 
to his dominions, would not go on the worse for what had 
happened. 

But the depriving the kingdom of the service of its ablest 
administrator and statesman was not the greatest mischief done 
to it by the influence of Madame de Maintenon ; and it must be 
added, that in the injury which she inflicted on it by her bigotry 
she was aided by the most zealous co-operation of Louis himself. 
She rekindled the fury of religious intolerance and persecution : to 
which Louis was the more inclined that in the early years of his 
reign, a schism had broken out among the Roman Catholics them- 
selves : a party among Avhoni, had not only broached some novel 
theological doctrines, but, at the same time, had also shown an 
inclination to favour the Fronde in its rebellion, a feeling quite suf- 
ficient to predispose king and court to regard them with disfavour. 
The new sect were called Jansenists, from the name of their founder, 
Jansen, professor of divinity at Louvain, and afterwards Bishop of 
Ypres, who had inculcated, in his lectures and in one or two 
publications, some of the opinions of St. Augustine in language 



i.D. 1645.] KISE OF THE JANSENISTS. 273 

wliicli seemed to imply an agreement with some of the doctrines 
of the Huguenots ; and with a power of argument and persuasiveness 
of eloquence, which had procured him a numerous band of disciples. 
His writings produced great excitement among the more rigid 
Roman Catholics. The Jesuits headed the opposition to them : 
denouncing them with extreme bitterness, and persuading Pope 
Innocent to issue a formal condemnation of some of the proposi- 
tions contained in them. And the Jansenists, nowise afraid to 
stand up in their own defence, willingly entered the field against 
the Jesuits, being fortunate enough to number in their ranks the 
wittiest man and the most powerful writer in the whole kingdom. 
In a series of Essays, which he entitled Provincial Letters, Blaise 
Pascal, previously known only as an admirable mathematician, ex- 
posed the errors of the Jesuits both in their principles and their prac- 
tice with irresistible power, making them as generally ridiculous 
as they were already generally odious.' And, as it was hardly pos- 
sible to attack them without occasionally trenching on the autho- 
rity of the Pope himself, whose champion they professed to be, 
he was insensibly drawn on to advance some doctrines not alto- 
gether compatible with the admission of the Papal infallibility. 
Louis, who cared little enough for religion, but a great deal for 
the principles of sovereign power, and for his own dignity, was 
easily persuaded to look on those who claimed a right to freedom of 
opinion on any subject as enemies of his own authority, and to 
identify an innovating spirit in religion with disloyalty in affairs 
of state; and, accordingly, he did his utmost to discountenance 
Jansenism, and endeavoured to compel all the French clergy to 
sign a formal repudiation of its principles ; but, as even the Pope, 
reasonably fearing to increase the number of seceders from 
Catholicism, abstained, as yet, from pronouncing it heresy, he was 
unable to persecute those who refused, and was all the more 
ready to indemnify himself for his disappointment at the expense 
of some other body; nor was it difficult to find victims. The 
Huguenots were the special objects of antipathy to his confessor, 
a Jesuit of the name of Annat ; who out of the king's vices found 
a way to' the gratification of his own bigotry. His Order never 
strained matters with kings, and was always more zealous for 
orthodoxy than for religion. And now Annat, finding it impossible 
to induce Louis to forsake his licentious habits, was willing to accept 
a compromise ; and suggested to him, instead of abandoning them, 

' Voltaire -would not be a snfe of French satirists,' he adds: ' Les 

guide on the theological points in- meilleures come'dies de Moliere n'ont 

volved in the dispute ; but he may pas plus de sel que les premieres 

be admitted as a competent judge of Lettres Provinciales ; Bossuet n'a rien 

compositions in his own langunge: do plus sublime que les dernieres.' 

and, hrtvir.g called Pascal the' first Steele de Louis XIV. chap. 35. 



274 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1G84. 

to atone for them by the extirpation of Protestantism. Ua 
found a ready listener in the king, who, much more inclined 
to oppress others than mortify himself, was glad to obtain indul- 
gence for his darling sins at so easy a rate. Speedily the law 
began to be strained to deprive the Huguenots of the privileges 
granted or secured to them by his predecessors ; even the indul- 
gences which Richelieu had confirmed to them were curtailed ; 
their liberty of worship was abridged ; their ministers were im- 
prisoned or banished on the most frivolous pretexts ; and they were 
carefully excluded from, and even deprived of, all official or honor- 
able employments. Presently edicts of a more active severity were 
issued against them : they were forbidden to marry Catholics ; or 
to act as guardians to the children of their nearest relatives. Num- 
bers began to flee from the country, and to seek the asylum which 
England, Holland, and some of the German States gladly opened 
to them. Fresh ordinances denounced the punishment of the 
galleys for all who thus endeavoured to emigrate, and forbad the 
sale of their estates by those who were suspected of the design to 
quit the country. While at the same time honours were layished on 
all persons of rank or reputation, and pecuniary bribes were distri- 
buted with profusion among those of a lower class, who could be 
induced to renounce Protestantism for the religion professed by 
the king. It is remarkable that, while Louis was thus harassing the 
Huguenots, he himself was so far from desiring to extend or aug- 
ment the Papal authority, that he was steadily curtailing the 
privileges and jurisdiction which the Pope claimed over the French 
clergy. He permitted the parliament to ordain the suppression 
of Papal Bulls ; and he more than once contemplated the establish- 
ment of an independent French Church under a native patriarch, 
which, while adhering to Romish doctrine, should acknowledge the 
king himself as the supreme authority in all ecclesiastical and 
spiritual as in all temporal matters. 

Eut with the growth of Madame de Maintenon's influence his 
feelings altered. He was not more inclined than before to sub- 
ordinate his royal authority to Papal domination ; but he became 
far more zealous in enforcing submission to the Papal doctrines as 
such. The lady hated the Huguenots with all the zeal of an 
apostate, because she herself had been bred up in the profession of 
their tenets, and had deserted them on her marriage with Scarron, 
who, as his chief dependence was on court favour, insisted on her 
conversion, though it was rather the abandonment of a creed to 
which he was not attached, than the adoption of one in which he 
did believe. While he lived it would have been difficult to decide 
what her religion was ; but as soon as she became a widow, she 
showed her earnestness by a display'' of great zeal in converting 



A.D. 1685. J PERSECUTIOJS OF HUGUENOTS. 275 

others: selecting as the subjects of her proselytising abilities 
chiefly young children ; and being so little fettered in her pro- 
ceedings by scruples, that some of her most remarkable converts 
were made by kidnapping the little daughters of Huguenot fathers 
during the absence of their parents from home, and whipping 
them till they came over to Catholicism, though they were so 
unable, by reason of their tender age, to distinguish between one 
religion and another, that their idea of the mass was that it was 
a ceremony in honour of the king. Whipping was all that she 
could do while she continued Madame Scarron ; but, now that she 
had the principal influence over the king, she conceived the idea 
of a persecution on a grander and severer scale ; and, in inducing 
Louis to adopt such a course, she was aided by Louvois, who, 
though he cared but little about religious doctrines or disputes, 
was as eager as she for the suppression of Protestantism in the 
kingdom, because he was meditating a war with the chief Pro- 
testant nations, and he feared that a Huguenot brotherhood in 
France might not be unwilling to ally itself with them. While 
his father Tellier, who had lately received the appointment of 
Chancellor, was so stern a bigot that he was wont to say that his 
one great wish was to live and hold oflice long enough to affix the 
great seal to the decree for the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. 
But that was too strong a measure to commence with ; and not 
sufficiently efficacious till steps should have been taken to prevent 
those who would be- affected by it from escaping its operation. 
Accordingly laws of greater severity than ever were enacted against 
all emigrants, and all who should aid or even be privy, without 
giving information, to the intended emigration of any Huguenot. 
Yet the penalties imposed were incurred, the new laws were baffled, 
and emigration went on steadily, till the notorious futility of his 
ordinances stimulated Louis to fresh contrivances of cruelty. He 
directed Louvois to issue a notice tj the military commanders, 
that all those who would not adopt his religion, (for it was the 
fact of its being his that made the rejection of it so offensive in his 
eyes), should suffer the most extreme rigour j and the method 
which, in obedience to his urgency, Louvois now devised, and 
which, from the nature of the troops employed, obtained the 
name of the Dragonnades, has become almost proverbial for its 
atrocity. The great bulk of the Huguenots were in the southern 
provinces ; and, at the beginning of 1685, Louvois sent orders to 
Marshal Boulflers, who commanded the troops stationed in that 
district, to quarter his men exclusively on the Protestants, keeping 
some in every house till the inhabitants should be converted, and 
then transferring them to another whose tenants were still in- 
tractable. The dragoons so employed were well aware that a 



276 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1685. 

peaceful residence in their quarters was not what was expected of 
them; and entered with a brutal joy into the views of their masters, 
hoping to gain the favour of their superiors by acting up to, or, if 
possible, exceeding their instructions. In blasphemous mockery, 
they fastened crossbars to their muskets, and compelled the 
peasantry to kiss the crosses thus manufactured ; they drove them 
in crowds like cattle to the Romish churches, pricking them, as 
they went, with swords or bayonets to quicken their pace. Thej^ 
dragged the women through the mud by the hair, stripped them, 
and scourged them, and cut and gashed the faces of those whom 
they supposed vain of their personal attractions. 

Against cruelties like these the faith of the greater part of the 
Protestants was not firm enough to hold out. Thousands consented 
to renounce their religion, signing the recantations demanded of 
them with such rapidity, that the Duke de Noailles, who com- 
manded in the Cevennes, wrote to Louvois that, though the 
Huguenots in his district amounted to a quarter of a million of 
pfwple, less than a month would suffice to convert the whole of 
them. Even the rulers at Versailles could perceive that such 
conversions were formal and insincere ; but with that they were 
satisfied. Madame de Maintenon herself remarking that it would 
be all the same in the next generation, since, though, the parents 
who were converted might be hypocrites, thinking of nothing but 
of an escape fi'om ill-treatment, their children, who would be 
educated by Catholics, would be suflaciently orthodox. Yet all 
did not yield, even to the Uragonnades. Many only adhered to 
their religion the more steadfastly for the cruelty which had been 
employed to make them desert it. In Languedoc and in Dauphin^ 
multitudes still assembled every Sunday, and persisted in the 
public performance of their religious worship, in defiance of the 
royal edicts, and of the presence of the troops, who were at once 
informers, witnesses, judges, and executioners ; and who, exciting 
themselves to fury at the sight, would often rush in and massacre 
the unresisting congregations, or drag them off before the tribunals 
of obsequious magistrates, who would at once pass on them 
sentences of death, which were instantly executed. And, in the 
Cevennes, the anticipations of de Noailles were so completely 
falsified that, as we shall see, twenty years afterwards it required 
a series of military operations under the conduct of one of the 
ablest generals in the kingdom to subdue those Huguenots who 
remained, and who were formidable enough, even when vanquished, 
to extort a compromise from the conquerors on conditions which 
were as mortifying to the pride of Louis as the disasters endured 
at the same time by his other generals at the hands of his foreign 
enemies. 



A.D. 1685.] EEVOCATION OF THE EDICT OE NANTES. 277 

But, though the contest was not finally terminated till the 
commencement of the next century, the continued resistance of 
tl)ose who still refused to desert their faith, led to the immediate 
accomplishment of Le Tellier's prayer in the revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes ; to which the recusants constantly appealed, with 
undeniable truth, as the charter which formally and expressly 
secured them all the privileges which they claimed. To allow it 
to remain in force, his advisers were constantly assuring Louis 
was a sin ; as it was one which gave him no pleasure, one which 
indeed contravened his notions of his own dignity, he was willing 
enough to renounce it ; and, in October 1685, he signed an ordinance 
revoking it in every one of its clauses and provisions, absolutely 
prohibiting the celebration of the Protestant worship in every 
part of his dominions, banishing for ever all Protestant ministers, 
and re-enacting the penalties which had been denounced against 
all emigrants. This last clause was one which must always be 
fruitless, even when unaccompanied by others which compel its vio- 
lation. And the emigration which was now seen to be the only refuge 
for those whom neither fear nor actual persecution could drive to 
apostacy, received such an impulse from the revocation of the 
Edict, that within a few years 500,000 Protestants had quitted 
the country' : those who thus fled being not only among the most 
honest and conscientious, but also among the most ingenious and 
industrious of the king's subjects, and, as such, those whom it 
was most for his interest to retain in his kingdom. 

If such a fact can be any excuse for Louis, it must be admitted 
that the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, though one of the 
most tyrannical and faithless of all his actions, was in entire 
unison with the feelings of the great majority of his subjects. His 
resolution to exterminate heresy was the theme of rapturous pane- 
gyric among all classes, and even among both sexes, of the Catholics. 
It was not even confined to one school among the divines. If 
the Jesuits were its original prompters, Arnauld the Jansenist 
was not less fervent in proclaiming its justice ; and the eloquent 
Bishop of Meaux, whose special boast it was that he was not a 
Jesuit, exerted his most impassioned oratory in eulogy not only 
of the success but of the righteousness of the measure ; while 
ladies, from whom at least pitj^ for suft'ering and misery might 
have been looked for, were equally loud in their panegyric : 
Madame de Sevign^ pronounciug the revocation of the Edict an 
act by itself sufficient to secure the sovereign who ordained it an 
immortality of renown. But, in truth, if the success of a policy is 
to be estimated by, or depends on the extent to which it promotes 
the welfare of the country, Voltaire, when he pronounced the 
act one of the great misfortunes of France, judged more cor- 



278 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1689. 

rectly as well as more, humanely than Bossuet. It was an un- 
doing of one of the most beneficial parts of Sully's policy. 
It drove away from the land crowds of the artisans that it 
was that great minister's boast to have attracted to it for its 
service and enrichment. It was not only that the veteran 
Marshal Schomberg fled to Holland, and presently aided in 
the expulsion of Louis's cousin from the throne of England, or 
that bands of soldiers of inferior rank enlisted in the Dutch service 
and swelled the armies which sold their lives so dearly at Stein- 
kerk and Neerwinden ; many fled whose labours had hitherto 
contributed no little to provide those proverbial sinews of war of 
which Louis's aggressive ambition kept him in such constant 
. need. The silk-weavers established manufactories at Spitalfields 
and Macclesfield. Makers of hats and stockings, and similar 
articles, of which France had hitherto enjoyed the monopoly, found 
a home in Saxony. Glass-blowers fled to Bohemia, and there 
tatight the art of fabricating those beautiful vases of diSerent 
colours, which, since that day, has been lost to the land where 
they had previously practised it. 

Nor even had the revocation the triumph of entirely gaining 
its end, and suppressing Protestantism in the kingdom. As has 
been mentioned, the Cevennes were still unsubdued ; and, in that 
wild mountainous district, many devout resolute men still main- 
tained the religion which they had been taught from their child- 
hood. It was not easy for soldiers encumbered with their 
military trappings to track the native inhabitants, to whom every 
pass among the hills and forests had been familiar from infancy ; 
though the authorities were aware that in many a secret ravine 
or cavern bands of prosecuted Huguenots met to worship in their 
own fashion, it was long before they could discover their principal 
haunts ; but whenever they did succeed in surprising a company, 
they indemnified themselves for their frequent failures by the ex- 
treme atrocity of the vengeance they took on all who fell into 
their hands. The preachers were broken on the wheel, and the 
congregations were sent to the galleys, where they were treated 
with a severity rarely practised towards the most hardened 
criminals. Cruelty drove them to despair, more than once they 
contemplated, and once they even commenced an insurrection, 
which, however, was premature, and easily crushed ; but in 1702, 
just at the moment when the commencement of the great War of 
the Succession promised to furnish full employment for all the 
statesmen and generals iu the country, an extraordinary act of 
tyranny, perpetrated by the chief Romish ecclesiastic in the dis- 
trict, the Abbe du Chaila, roused the spirit of resistance into 



&j>. 1702.] THE CAMISAEDS. 279 

general action, and the whole Protestant population of the 
Cevennes rose at once against their oppressors. 

The Abbe had at all times been diligent and pitiless as a per- 
secutor ; but he had rarely been able to lay his hands on victims 
of any higher class than the peasants and shepherds of the district, 
when, having obtained intelligence that a number of the wealthier 
inhabitants favoured the doctrines, and secretly practised the forms 
of worship which he held in abhorrence, and that they were de- 
signing to quit the country for Switzerland, he succeeded in 
capturing the whole party, and at once threw them into dun- 
geons which he had constructed under his own house. Among 
his prisoners were two young ladies, named Sexti de Moissac, 
belonging to one of the principal families in the province ; and 
their relations, who knew du Chaila's character, were by no means 
inclined to leave them at his mercy. They took their measures 
with decision : collecting a band of peasants, rudely armed with 
agricultural implements, they attacked the Abbe's house, forced 
an entrance, and, exploring the dungeons, found their worst fears 
realised. Though not above one or two days had elapsed since 
the arrest of the company, and though it was alleged that they 
were only detained for trial, it was evident that they had already 
been exposed to the worst extremities of cruelty. Their bodies 
were swollen and lacerated, in many instances their bones were 
broken, and some of them were evidently dying of the tortures 
which had been inflicted on them. Their deliverers had not com- 
pleted their in s'estigation, when the Abbe's servants attacked them 
with guns, firing upon them and killing several 5 and the comrades 
of those who thus fell, exasperated by this onslaught, and maddened 
by what they had seen, set fire to the house, and du Chaila 
himself perished in the flames. The success of this attack on the 
most detested and most dreaded of their persecutors acted as a 
stimulus on all the Protestants of the district. Armed bands rose 
in all directions, committing atrocities hardly less pardonable 
than the severities which had infuriated them : murdering several 
of the officers who fell into their hands; and presently, uniting, 
formed themselves into a small army, choosing for their leaders 
an old soldier, named Laporte, and a young baker, named Jean 
Cavalier, who, though only twenty-two years of age, had already 
acquired an ascendency over his companions which the energy 
and talent he afterwards displayed fully justified ; they assumed 
a name, Camisards, from a sort of smock frock called camise, which 
was the ordinary garb of the majority, and the systematic organisa- 
tion which they thus gave to their movement encouraging others 
to join them, they soon found their numbers amount to 1,000 



280 MODEElSr HISTOEY. .[a.d. 1702. 

armed men, and fearlessly stood fortli in open insurrection against 
the government. 

The governor of the province, M. Lamoignon de Baville, long 
known to them .all as one of the fiercest of their enemies, was also 
a man of prompt and decided character ; while his brother-in-law, 
the Count de Broglie, the military commander-in-chief, was a 
soldier of fair professional reputation. The two officers determined 
to crush the insurrection in the bud ; but their forces and their 
skill proved so unequal to the contest, that it became necessaiy to 
supersede de Broglie, and he was replaced by a Marshal of France, 
Montrevel, who had no better success. He succeeded, indeed, in sur- 
prising some parties of unarmed worshippers on Sundays; when 
he outdid all former persecutors in barbarity : on one occasion, 
having come suddenly upon a congregation assembled for prayer, 
in a mill near Nismes, he set fire to it and burnt the whole company 
alive, commanding his soldiers to thrust even the women who 
tried to escape back into the flames with their bayonets. Village 
after village he treated in the same manner, burning the houses and 
slaughtering the inhabitants ; but his cruelty baffled itself. From 
many villages the whole population fled before he could reach 
them, and joined the Camisard army, which thus grew in numbers, 
and daily became more and more formidable. It was in vain that 
Pope Clement XL came to the marshal's support with a public 
sanction of all his sanguinary proceedings, and published a Crusade 
against the Camisards, promising a general and complete remis- 
sion of sins to all who should join in their extirpation. Even the 
spiritual benediction failed to render his men able to cope with their 
antagonists : till, when the contest had lasted two years, Louis re- 
called Montrevel also, and, though not without a bitter feeling of 
humiliation, consented to try milder means. Marshal \illars was 
a man of more humane temper than de Broglie or Montrevel, and 
as he was also one of the bravest and ablest generals of the day, 
he could venture to advise the adoption of a more moderate tone 
towards the insurgents without incurring the charge of timidity. 
His counsel was taken, and he himself was sent down to the 
Cevennes to carry it out. Ilis predecessors had come with sword 
and firebrand ; he, like them, brandished the sword in one hand, 
but he held forth a treaty in the other. Though the demands 
which the progress of the war on the Danube made on the re- 
sources of the kingdom were such that the whole force that could 
be spared to him did not exceed 2,500 men, in his skilful hands it 
proved sutficient. Dividing it into suitable detachments, he pressed 
the insurgents in many quarters at once, announcing at the same 
time that, though he would show no mercy to any whom he 
might find in arms against the king, he was authorised to pardon 



A.D. 1705.] SUBSEQUENT CAEEER OF CAVALIER. 281 

all who submitted, and even to promise them permission to sell 
their property, and to quit the country. For, iu the inhumar 
dictionary of Louis perpetual banishment was pardon, and con- 
fiscation indulgence. It was a very limited amnesty ; but when 
Villars took upon himself the responsibility of enlarging it in 
some instances, it succeeded. Cavalier, who in the various en- 
counters with de Broglie and Montrevel had displayed remarkable 
talents for war, recognised his master in Villars. The resources 
of his party were exhausted ; and, when he and the division under 
his immediate command had been for two days literally without 
food, he listened to the overtures which the marshal addressed 
to him personally, and consented to abandon the revolt, and return 
to his allegiance on being assured of entire pardon and honorable 
employment in the king's service for himself, and for all who 
chose to follow his guidance and example. His end was singular. 
He received a colonel's commission in the royal army, and served 
for a short time at the head of a small regiment of his old followers 
in Alsace ; but the French officers in general looked coldly on 
him : and, having reason to suspect that Louis had not forgotten 
his rebellion, and was still resolved to chastise it at some future 
day, he resigned his command, and passed over to England, where 
he obtained a commission in the British army ; and, in the reign 
of George n. died a general officer and governor of Jersey. Still, 
though many had fled, and many had submitted, the principles of 
the Reformation were not wholly suppressed in France, nor was 
the spirit of persecution satiated. We have already seen that the 
bitter animosities which divided the Jesuits and Jansenists did 
not prevent the latter from expressing as warm an approval as the 
former of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes ; and so, during 
the greater part of the ensuing century, the most opposite motives 
constantly led men of the most different characters to agree in the 
most active and relentless hostility towards the Huguenots. The 
vitality of the Protestants resembled the vigour of Rome itself in 
its ancient contest with Carthage, when, as the poet represents 
ILanuibal complaining, in proportion to the severity of each 
succeeding disaster was the proud elasticity with which she rose 
from the ruin ; and so before the middle of the eighteenth 
century their numbers were again estimated to exceed two mil- 
lions ; while the perception of their growth stimulated constantly 
renewed exertions to repress them. And it mattered little to them 
what were the views of the party which happened to be in 
power. More than once the idea was revived of establishing an 
independent Galilean Church ; and the more eager the advocates 
of such a step were for its accomplishment, the more needful did 
they consider it to show that, on purely spiritual and theological 



282 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1705. 

questions, there was no difference between tlieir Tiews and those 
of the strictest Papist. And no proof of orthodoxy could be 
given as irresistible as the persecution of all who disowned any 
of the Roman doctrines. Dubois, a man so infamous that even 
the regent, shameless as he was, could not conceal his contempt 
for him, persecuted in order to obtain a cardinal's hat. St.-Simon, 
than whom the age produced no more thoroughly well-meaning 
man, and who himself had boldness fearlessly to reprove vice even 
in the highest places, was as intolerant as the most servile Jesuit, 
perverting all the lessons of history into injunctions of persecution. 
Louis XV. himself, while surpassing in licentiousness even the 
infiunous example of his predecessor, and while in every act of his 
life disowning all the obligations of religion, was as desirous as 
his great-grandfather had been to purchase the connivance of the 
priests at his profligacy by sanctioning the hunting down of men 
whose lives were admitted to be blameless, and who had long 
ceased to give the slightest grounds for accusing them of disloyalty. 
The regent indeed, if he had had the firmness to carry out his own 
convictions of what was best for the interests of the country, would 
not only have put a stop to all persecution, but would have en- 
deavoured to bring back the Huguenots who had fled. He saw 
clearly how greatly the kingdom had suffered from the flight of so 
many of its producers of riches, its best workmen, and projected 
the establishment of a Protestant colony at Douai, which should 
be allowed the free exercise of its religion. Such a measure he 
secretly believed to be favorable to his own interest also, since 
for private objects he was anxious for the friendship of George I., 
and justly thought that no circumstance could tend so much to 
render an alliance with him popular among the English people as 
the knowledge of his showing indulgent toleration to their fellow 
Protestants. But some of his most trusted advisers opposed the 
idea so vehemently, that he abandoned it. The old laws were 
suffered to remain in force ; and, throughout the reign of Louis 
XV. the fate of the Huguenots, in the different parts of the king- 
dom, depended chiefly on the disposition of the governors of each 
province. It was but too characteristic of the tj^annical narrow- 
mindedness of his father that, of all those great officers, the most 
barbarous was the Duke of Berw the son of James II. of Eng- 
land and Arabella Churchill. He was governor of Guienne ; and as 
burning detached houses and surprising small bands of secret 
worshippers was a process too slow to satisfy his ferocious bigotry, he 
proposed to renew the horrors of St. Bartholomew, and to march 
thi-ough the whole province at the head of his troops, massacreing 
every Huguenot without mercy, and thus extinguishing the Re- 
formation in that beautiful but stubborn region. Such a proposal 



A.D. 1705.] GRADUAL CESSATION OF PERSECUTION. 2S3 

shocked even the worthless and careless Orleans ; tut the royal 
authority was too weak to impose much restraint on the governors 
of distant provinces ; and though the regent enjoined modera- 
tion, and forhad the prosecution of any but the preachers, Berwick 
laid hands on all the congregations which he could discover, 
and compelled the obsequious judges at Bordeaux to send the 
entire companies to the galleys. The Duke de Richelieu, the 
plunderer of Planover, was as merciless in Languedoc as Berwick 
had been in Guienne. But by the last ten or twelve years of the 
reign, the Jesuits, who had throughout been the chief instigators 
of and agents in persecution, had become so universally unpopular 
that their exhortations were less regarded ; some recent executions 
had been at once so atrocious in their barbarity, and so absurd in 
tbe pretences alleged for them, as to attract the notice of Voltaire, 
who, utterly indifferent to religion and decency, as his whole 
career proved him, was nevertheless on most occasions a zealous 
and enlightened advocate of freedom and humanity ; he took up 
the cause of the victims, and pursued those to whom they owed 
their death, with a combination of invective and ridicule which 
even men with justice and reason on their side would have found 
it hard to encounter ; and which the oppressors of the Huguenots 
found so in-esistible that, from that time forth religious prosecutions 
ceased ; and for the rest of the life of Louis XV., and during the 
entire reign of Louis XVL, the Huguenots enjoyed a practical 
toleration ; though it was not till the close of the Revolution, 
and the promulgation of the Charter, by Louis XVIIL that reli- 
gious freedom was established in France as a principle of the 
Constitution.^ 

1 The authorities for this chapter, d'Anquetil ; Memoirs of St.-Simon, 

besides the regular French Histories, of Villars, of Berwick ; Sir James , 

areyohahe's^ Siecle deLouisXIV.,' !• tephen's Lectures; Madame de / i 

'Louis XlV.la Covr etlaRegence,^ o( ,'• e'vigne's Zeftres, &c. Lj 



i)A . 



284 MODEEN HISTORY. [aj). 1532. 



CHAPTER XIII. 
A.D. 1570—1697. 

HENRY, Eichelieu, and Louvois were desirous, as French 
statesmen, to depress the House of Austria, in order to found 
the pre-eminence of their own country on its humiliation ; but for 
many years the Empire had an equally, if not more formidable, 
enemy on its eastern side. The Turks, always anxious to extend 
their dominion in Europe, even before they had vanquished Con- 
stantinople, had penetrated into Servia, and had laid siege to 
Belgrade. That citj', long the continued object of their attacks, 
held them at bay with admirable valour and constancy for seventy 
years ; but, in the meantime, they had penetrated into Styria, 
Illyria, and to the frontiers of Austria itself, and by the beginning 
of the sixteenth century had become so formidable to Christendom, 
that the Emperor Maximilian was not without the hope that the 
feeling of common danger would induce all the chief Christian 
States to unite under his leadership in a crusade against the 
Infidel. The pi-oject was formally sanctioned by the Pope, but, 
before any steps could be taken to carry it out, Maximilian died ; 
and, while the first movements of the Reformation distracted the 
attention of all the Christian princes, the animosities which arose 
between the new Emperor and Francis compelled the concentration 
of all the resources of the Empire on that contest. Profiting by 
these distractions, Solyman the Magnificent at last effected the 
reduction of Belgrade ; and, in the year after Charles triumphed 
over his rival at Pavia, the irresistible Sultan inflicted a still more 
decisive defeat on Lewis, king of Hungary, at Mohacz, Lewis 
himself being slain, and many of tire chief citieS" and most im- 
portant fortresses in the kingdom being among the fruits of the 
victory. Charles's brother, Ferdinand, who by an old settlement 
of the crown, now became king of Hungary and Bohemia, found 
that he had succeeded to an inheritance of war, which threatened 
the very heart of the Empire when, three years later, the con- 
queror, pusliing on, invested Vienna itself. But the reduction of 
that city was an entei-prise beyond his power : he was repulsed, 
with no trifling loss; while the danger to which his capital had 



A.D. 1545.] AGGEESSIONS OF THE TUEKS. 285 

been exposed stimulated Charles, relieved as he was for a time 
from all fears from France, to exert his whole strenp^th to deliver 
his dominions and those of his brother from future attacks. Rais- 
ing a vast army of above 100,000 men, in the autumn of 1532, he 
drove Solj^man back to Constantinople ; and the Sultan, sagacious 
enough to recognise his inability to cope with the undivided might 
of such a sovereign, waited contentedly till a renewal of hostilities 
between the Christian princes should present him with a more 
favorable opportunity for renewing his own enterprises. As he 
foresaw, he had not long to wait. Francis, caring far less for 
differences of faith than for vengeance on the Emperor, even saught 
his alliance ; and, strengthened by the support of such a con- 
federate, Solyman again bore the banner of the Crescent to the 
banks of the Danube, overran Hungary almost without resistance, 
and in 1545 had the singular triumph of reducing Ferdinand to 
submit to hold a portion of his kingdom as a vassal and tributary 
of his throne, and to leave its southern provinces in his hands. 
But such a treaty was not likely to last longer than it might suit 
the conqueror to observe it. Twenty years afterwards, the Sultan 
again marched against Vienna ; but, being delayed by the resist- 
ance of some inferior fortresses, died while still at a distance from 
that city. His death, however, produced no change in the policy 
of his nation. His successor Selim, at the first moment of his 
accession, did indeed conclude a treaty with the Emperor Maxi- 
milian II., by which he restored to him some considerable districts 
of Hungar.y which his father had held, but it was soon seen that 
any expectations of his general moderation which were founded on 
this transaction were delusive ; and that the new Sultan's sole 
object was to gain time to make other acquisitions which he re- 
garded as more important for the consolidation of his dominions, 
and consequently for future warfare in any direction. 

Solyman had not limited his ambition to conquests in the west. 
lie had stretched out an equally aggressive grasp towards the 
east ; and, almost at the same time that he had made himself 
master of Belgrade, he had expelled the Knights of St. John from 
Ithodes, and had made himself master of that island, whose mili- 
tary importance was proved by the stout and protracted resistance 
that the small and unassisted garrison made to his apparently 
overwhelming host. Pursuing his policy, Selim directed his first 
efforts to the task of wresting from Venice the still more valuable 
island of Cyprus, which she had acquired, by a strange mixture of 
violence and chicanery, nearly a century before, but of which her 
possession had been confirmed by repeated treaties, and to which 
no other government could pretend a more legitimate claim. But 
Venice had greatly declined in power since she first became its 



286 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1570, 

mistress. The fair island, which for its exquisite and varied 
beauty the poets of old had assigned to Venus as her peculiar 
domain, though reft of the protection of the Queen of Love, was 
still rich in the less sentimental attractions of vineyards, olive 
gardens, cornfields, and copper mines ; and full of resources both 
for commerce and war, from her convenient harbours find well- 
armed fortresses. Selim now claimed it as a territory whose 
situation manifestly pointed it out as belonging of right to the 
sovereign of Constantinople ; and, in the winter of 1569, declared 
war against Venice without alleging any ground of complaint 
against the Republic ; and at once began to equip a vast armament 
whose destination was announced to be Nicosia, the capital of the 
island. The intelligence excited general indignation, but equally 
general consternation in Venice. The Queen of the Adriatic, stiU 

Sate in state, throned oq her hundred isles ; ^ 

but it was but 'a dying glory that smiled over' them : and she 
had already lost much of the power which, in the days of the 
Crusades, had led all Europe voluntarily to own her supremacy as 
' Mistress of the Seas,* and had given her doge the proud oppor- 
tunity of refusing the Imperial crown, and the dominion over Con- 
stantinople itself.'* The last century had been an age of constant 
war with the Sultan, and of almost equally unvarying defeat, 
humiliation, and loss of territory. There had been times when 
the capital itself did not seem safe from attack ; and, thirty years 
before, Solyman had stripped her of her last remaining strongholds 
in the Archipelago and on the mainland of the Morea. Even to 
herself it was plain that her unassisted strength was insufficient to 
preserve Cyprus, the most valuable, as it was nearly the last, of 
her distant settlements : but. it was also plain that other powers 
were almost equally interested in preventing the Infidel from 
becoming absolute master of the whole of the Levant. In her 
extremity she appealed to all the potentates of Christendom for aid ; 
and her appeal was supported by a patron who, though among the 
weakest of princes in warlike power, had still a potential influence 
in the councils of many mightier states. It was but an unpropi- 
tious time to invite the kingdoms of the west to an arduous war, 
when all were agitated and torn by internal divisions ,• when the 
States which made up the German Empire were all regarding one 
another with distrust and animosity ; when civil war had for ten 
years been raging in France ; and when the resources of Spain, 

' BjTon, Childe Harold, iv. 1. 
2 Villehai-dou in, quoted by Gibbon. ^ Gibbon, chap. Ixi. 



A.D. 1570.] PHILIP II. UNITES WITH VENICE. 287 

great as tliey were, were already taxed to the utmost by the 
contest with the Morescoes in the Peninsula and the revolt of the 
Netherlands. From Germanj"-, or from France, no aid was to he 
obtained ; but with Philip deference for the Romish See was a 
powerful principle ; and, when the euA-oy sent by Pius V. to urge 
him to unite in a League which, as being designed to curb the 
encroachments of the Infidel, would have something of a holy 
character, arrived at the Spanish court, he unhesitatingly gave his 
consent, and, narrow-minded tyrant as his general career showed 
him, on this occasion adopted a policy at once farsighted and 
generous. He had sagacity to perceive that no power was as deeply 
concerned as Spain in preventing the Ottoman fleet from becoming 
supreme in the Mediterranean : that, if a stand were to be made 
against such a danger, it could never be made with such a probability 
of success as while the Venetians were both willing and able to 
unite in it : and that, if the Republic were stripped of her trans- 
marine possessions, her power of resistance would be greatly 
abridged, even if her zeal were not quenched by the feeling that 
she had no objects of her own to fight for. The character, too, of 
the Champion of Christianity, with which his placing himself at 
the head of the confederacy to which Pius invited him, would 
invest him, was not without its attractions for his mind ; and, 
under the influence of these feelings, he not only signified his 
willingness to become a member of the projected League against 
the Infidel, but anticipated the discussion of the necessary arrange- 
ments, by at once sending a powerful fleet to sea, under the com- 
mand of the great Genoese, Andrew Doria, at that time the most 
renowned sea-captain in Europe, Doria was speedily joined by a 
Venetian and a Roman squadron ; but at Crete their combined 
fleets were met by intelligence of the fall of Nicosia, which a few 
days before had been stormed by the Turks, and sacked with the 
most atrocious cruelty. And as so rapid a success proved the 
Turkish force to be stronger than had been supposed, Doria and 
his colleagues returned home, and the next winter was devoted to 
the making of more extensive preparations. Philip had some diffi- 
culty in keeping Venice faithful to the alliance, though it had been 
originally concluded for her own defence. Always treacherous, she 
was also easily intimidated, and was now so dismayed at the first 
success of the enemy, that she would willingly have entered into a 
secret negotiation at Constantinople ; nor was it till she found her- 
self unable to make separate terms with the enemy, that she could 
resolve to put forth the exertions required by the magnitude of 
the contest, and of her own interests which were at stake upon 
its issue. Philip, on the other hand, was only the more convinced 
by the fate of Nicosia of the vital necessity of at once arresting 



288 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1571- 

the further progress of the conqueror. And his resources for 
prosecuting the next campaign were increased ; since the same 
autumn which saw tlie triumph of the Infidel in Cyprus, witnessed 
also the conquest and submission of the Morescoes in his own 
dominions; and he could now employ his illegitimate brother, 
Don John of Austria, to whose vigour and capacity their subju- 
gation was generally attributed, as the commander-in-chief in this 
more formidable warfare. It was a politic selection. Young as 
he was, he had not yet seen his twenty-fourth birthday, Don 
John had already won not only a splendid renown, but universal 
popularity by his union of chivalrous gallantry with the most 
engaging affability and cordiality of manner. And his appoint- 
ment at once excited a general enthusiasm, which prompted the 
most celebrated captains, and nobles of the most azure blood, to 
seek to serve under his banner. 

The force to be placed under the prince's command was to be 
worthy of such a leader. Throughout the winter, every port in 
Spain, and in all the Spanish dependencies, in Campania, and 
Sicily resounded with the din of preparation. Venice was not less 
active ; and before the end of the next summer an armament was 
assembled to await his arrival at Messina, such as had never been 
seen in Europe since the preachings of Peter and of Bernard 
united emperors and kings in the attempt to wrest the sepulchre 
of their Lord from the Saracens. Ninety royal galleys, with sails 
and oars, answering to the ships of the line of more modern days, 
with nearly as many smaller vessels, were the Spanish contingent. 
The Venetian galleys were even more numerous, though less 
strongly built, and less completely equipped ; and, they provided 
also six vessels of extraordinary size, called galeazze, each armed 
with forty guns, of a calibre never previously seen, on the execution 
to be done by which they placed great reliance. The substantial 
contribution of the Pope to the expedition was but small : he 
could but man twelve galleys, which were lent him for the purpose 
by the Venetians ; but he was prodigal of those spiritual aids and 
encouragements which were supposed to fortify every portion of 
it, and to impart redoubled vigour to every arm ; every individual 
of the mighty host was protected from purgatory and hell by the 
Papal blessing ; a nuncio, sent to Messina for the purpose, 
proclaimed a plenary remission of sins to all engaged ; while the 
chief himself was honoured with the special gift of a consecrated 
standard, the banner of the Cross, which was to be borne at his 
masthead, and which was to secure him the victory in every 
conflict. 

So much time was necessarily consumed in the equipment of so 
mighty an armament, that it was not till the middle of September 



A.D. 1571.] THE BATTLE OF LEPANTO. 289 

1571 that Don John quitted the Sicilian harbour to seek for his 
foe. Meanwhile that foe had not been idle. The Sultan had aug- 
mented his fleet also, till it exceeded that of the Christians in 
number ; and, as he was ready for action first, he had employed it 
during- the summer in ravaging the Venetian territories which lay 
along the northern coast of the Adriatic. It had just returned to 
the Morea, laden with booty ; and, as a squadron of light vessels 
which Don John had sent out for intelligence reported, was now 
lying in the Gulf of Lepanto, as if in wait to fall on the allies as 
soon as they should appear in the open sea. Don John determined 
to anticipate the attack, and to seek his enemy where he lay, never 
doubting of victory, and judging that the narrowness of the strait 
which led into the gulf would render it the more complete by pre- 
venting the escape of any disabled vessels. As he drew near the 
Greek coast, fresh tidings reached him to add fuel to his courage. 
The Turks had never intermitted their operations in Cyprus : 
they had just taken Famagosta, the second city in the island, 
and Mustapha, their victorious general, had flayed its chief com- 
mander, Bragadino, alive ; and, having stufl'ed his skin, had sailed 
to Constantinople, with the horrid trophy dangling at his yardarm, 
in token of his triumph. A Christian knight might well think it 
a pious duty to chastise to extermination a band of monsters 
capable of aggravating the horrors of war by such savage bar- 
barity ; and, with greater eagerness than ever, the Christian arma- 
ment pressed onwards to the battle. 

Day had scarcely dawned on the seventh of October when the 
leading Spanish vessels entered the Gulf, and came in sight of the 
Turkish fleet, arrayed, as was the fashion of their nation, in the 
form of a half-moon, and, as the first glance revealed, far more 
numerous and powerful than previous information had led Don 
John to expect. Two hundred and fifty large galleys, with a pro- 
portionate number of smaller craft, mapned, including soldiers, by 
120,000 men, presented a deep line, above three miles in length. 
Its commander-in-chief was Ali Pasha, whose comparative youth 
rendered him more accessible to feelings of humanity than was 
usual among his countrymen ; thougli it had not prevented him 
from acquiring a renown equal to that of the most hardened 
veterans : Sirocco, the viceroy of Egypt, whose more mature pru- 
dence Avas designed to temper the ardour of his leader, commanded 
the right wing: the left was entrusted to Uluck Ali, Dey or 
Prince of the corsairs who had made Algiers the terror of the 
Mediterranean, and, as such, skilful, fearless, insatiable, and piti- 
less. The Christian, like the Turkish fleet, was marshalled in 
three divisions. Don John had already proved himself worthy of 
his post, by the timely judgment with which he had arranged his 
14 



290 MODEEN niSTORY. [a.d. 1571. 

plan of battle. Like our own Nelson, ages afterwards, at the 
Nile, he had furnished every one of his captains with distinct in- 
structions for his conduct, and for the placing of his ship : so that 
each had had time to consider and thoroughly to comprehend the 
part allotted to him. He himself led on the centre : Barbarigo, 
of Venice, commanded the left wing : Doria, whose life had been 
spent in conflict with the African pirates, was opposed to Uluck 
Ali, on the right: while Don Alvaro de Bazan, marquis of Santa 
Cruz, had thirty-five of the fastest vessels entrusted to him, as a 
squadron of reserve, to succour any part of the line that might 
require assistance. The whole force was slightly inferior in 
number to the Infidels. The galleys did not exceed 210. The 
crews, including 29,000 soldiers, were fewer by 10,000 than those 
under the command of the Pasha. But they had one great advan- 
tage ; they were all armed with arquebuses, while the majority of 
the Turks had no missile weapons but bows and arrows ; and, slo at 
and irregular as the discharge of fire-arms was in those days, yet 
their superiority in range and efficacy was more than sufficient, so 
long as the combatants were at a distance from each other, to 
counterbalance the disparity of numbers. 

Very different was the feeling which seemed to animate the 
hostile armaments as they di-ew near to each other. The Moslems 
greeted the advance of the allies with the shrill menacing yells 
which were their national war-cry. Don John, full of the ardent 
devotion which was one of the principles of true chivalry, threw 
himself on his knees, and offered up a brief prayer to the Saviour, 
that he would on that day aid his people against those who scoffed 
at his name. The whole crew of the flagship, the R^al, followed 
his example : it was imitated in every ship of the fleet : for a few 
moments every voice but that of prayer was hushed : every hand was 
raised to heaven in supplication : and, when the worshippers rose 
from their knees, they perceived that their orison had already 
found favour with the Almighty, and that the wind, which had 
hitherto been unfavorable, had changed at the very instant ot 
their prayer, and was now bearing them rapidly down upon the 
wondering enemy. 

As soon as they came within range a heavy fire was opened 
upon them along the whole of the Turkish line ; but Don John 
pressed vigorously forward without regarding it, trusting to make 
an impression on the enemy's centre by resolute hard fighting, 
while he left his lieutena)its to manoeuvre on the wings. There the 
fortune of the day was chequered, and for some time equally 
balanced. Sirocco, on the right, passing between the northern shore 
and Barbarigo's squadron, turned that division, placing it between 
two foes; Barbarigo was killed, and several Venetian galleys 



A.D. 1571.] THE BATTLE OF LEPANTO. 291 

■were taken or sunk. But, when Uluck Ali attempted a similar 
manoeuvre on the left, he was baffled by Doria ; and though the 
gallant Genoese could not prevent the redoubted corsair from cap- 
turing one large Maltese galley, and from sinking more tban one 
of her consorts, he fought on so stoutly, that he gained time for 
Santa Cruz to come to his aid with a portion of the reserve ; and 
their combined exertions speedily restored the battle in that 
quarter^ retaking the prizes, and putting Uluck Ali himself to 
flight. But it was on blows to be dealt in the centre that the 
fate of the day depended ; and each commander felt that to be the 
case, and singled out the other as the one antagonist whose over- 
throw would at once crown him with victory. Scarcely regarding 
what was taking place on either side, they drove their huge 
galleys right against each other with such a shock that disabled 
several banks of oars in the E,^al, which was the smaller of the 
two ; and then, as they fell on board one another, the fiercest con- 
flict of the day began ; for among the pasha's crew was a picked 
band of Janissaries, armed with muskets, like the prince's body- 
guard ; and both kept up an incessant fire, though it was soon 
seen that the Spaniards were the more rapid and the more ac- 
curate marksmen. Twice the Spaniards tried to board: twice 
they were repulsed with terrible slaughter; Don John himself 
being slightly wounded. They were making a third attempt, and 
Ali in person was heading those who were striving to beat them 
back, when a musket-ball struck him on the head. His fall dis- 
heartened his own men, while it redoubled the ardour of his 
assailants. The Spaniards won the deck. A second wound 
terminated the suft'erings and exertions of the pasha, whom Don 
John would gladly have saved. His standard, a sacred banner, 
covered all over with texts from the Koran and countless repe- 
titions of the name of Allah emblazoned in gold, was hauled down 
from his masthead, while an ensign of the Cross was hoisted in 
its stead, announcing to both fleets the triumph of those whose 
symbol it was, and striking dismay into the one, while it rendered 
the other confident and irresistible. The Turkish centre was now 
easily broken. The Venetians, who, in spite of the death of their 
admiral, had fought on stubbornly, redoubled their efibrts. Sirocco's 
flagship was sunk, and he himself was slain; and his whole 
squadron scattered and routed. And, when the battle had lasted 
four hours, no portion of the Infidel fleet was unsubdued, but the 
squadron of the Algerine, who, now hoisting all sail, fled from the 
Gulf; and though Doria, and Santa Cruz, and Don John himself 
pursued him, they could but drive a few of his vessels on shore, 
and could not prevent the main body, consisting of about 40 galleys, 
from passing the straits in safety. But, with the exception of 



292 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1571. 

that squadron, not one yessel of the vast Turkish host escaped. 
130 galleys surrendered ; eighty were sunk or hurnt ; the number 
of the slain was countless ; the prisoners amounted to 5,000 ; and, 
a prize.far more gratifying than any number of Infidel captives or 
victims, 12,000 Christian slaves, "who had been chained to the 
oars of the Moslem galleys, were now delivered from captivity and 
bondage, and restored to their homes. 

It may easilj' be supposed that the intelligence of such a victory 
was received with the most unbounded exultation in every country 
that could claim a share in it. The people of Messina presented 
the victorious prince with 30,000 crowns, (which he divided 
among those of his followers who had been wounded), and erected 
a bronze statue in his honour at the entrance of their harbour. 
The Venetians set apart the anniversary of the day on which it 
was won as a solemn festival for ever. The Pope, though avoid- 
ing the blasphemy with which his successor extolled the crime of 
Clement, was excited far beyond all bounds of Apostolic modera- 
tion, and comparing the youthful hero, who had checked the pro- 
gress of Mahometanism, to the holy Prophet who had announced 
the approach of the Saviour, exclaimed, with tears of rapture, 
' There was a man sent from God whose name was John.' The 
country which received the news of his triumph with the greatest 
moderation was Spain itself. Madrid indeed was illuminated ; 
Philip went in state to hear mass at the principal cathedral, and 
gave a prominent place in his gallery to a picture of the fight 
which the celebrated Titian, though now more than ninety years 
of age, resumed his brush to paint. But in his heart, the king- 
was jealous of the renown which his brother had acquired; and 
those who knew the court, and who loved Don John, sorrowfully 
foreboded that he would have enjoyed more of the royal favour, 
and perhaps of the royal protection, had his merit and popularity 
been less conspicuous. Yet Venice did not at the moment reap 
as much benefit or glory from the victory as Spain. Though it 
had so broken the maritime power of the Sultan that her terri- 
tories on the land of the Adriatic were no longer liable to ravage, 
it could -not give her back Cyprus. But to Spain it at once trans- 
ferred the renown previously enjoyed by the Turkish navy. It 
established the fame of the Spanish sailors as invincible: and no 
one, in that moment of triumph, could dream that, before that 
generation should have passed away, her maritime supremacy would 
be torn from her, and a mightier fleet than that which she had sent 
to Lepanto would be destroyed by a nation whose sovereign did 
not yet possess a single score of ships of war. 

One glory indeed, which was an indirect consequence of the 
great battle still survives to her, and will endure as long as the 



A.D. 1660.] CERVANTES IS WOUNDED. 293 

admiration of genius shall exist among men. As a few years before, 
a "wound received by Ignacio Loyola, at Pampeluna, had led to 
the foundation of the Order of the Jesuits, so now a shot received 
in the hand by Miquel de Cervantes, a Spanish gentleman, which 
disabled him from following the profession of arms, drove him to 
seek a livelihood by his pen ; and to give to the world the immor- 
tal tale of Don Quixote, which is not more highly esteemed in his 
native land, and in its original language, than it is in every other 
country in Europe, though in the form, generally so little favora- 
ble to works of genius, of a translation : every nation has adopted 
it as its own ; and the severest critics have pronounced it one of 
the few books which every one wishes to be longer. 

But, heavy as was the blow which the Turk had thus received, 
he was not 3'et the sick man- that those who covet his inheritance 
have since called him. He had not been so disabled by it as to 
cease to be" a dangerous neighbour, if indeed the compulsion to 
confine his principal efforts for the future to operations on land 
had not rendered his armies more formidable than ever. His 
principal enemy, or, it would be more correct to say, the chief 
object of his attacks was the Emperor ; because, as the Austrian 
dominions all along their southern frontier bordered on his terri- 
tories, they were necessarily the most exposed to his aggression ; 
while the intrigues and commotions which for many years agitated 
Hungary and Transylvania, and the claims of different usurpers 
and pretenders to the chief authority in those countries, gave him 
incessant opportunities of interfering in their affairs, of picking or 
provoking a quarrel with the Emperor. It is a shrewd remark of 
Montecuculi, that for a man who is always armed opportunity is 
never bald, but has always a forelock by which she can be grasped ; 
and that the Turk was always armed, the whole constitution of 
his country being military. The conseq^uence was that, for above 
a century after Lepanto, war, constant and active, or intermittent 
and languid, kept the two nations in a continual attitude of 
mutual hostility ; in which the Turks, in spite of the intestine 
troubles, which during the earlier part of the seventeenth century 
distracted their empire, gradually gained the advantage, at one 
time even establishing such a superiority that they again com- 
pelled the Emperor to pay tribute for some of the Hungarian pro- 
vinces. So completely indeed was enmity recognised as the sole 
relation in which the two Empires could stand to each other, that 
even the treaties which they occasionally concluded did not pro- 
fess to establish permanent peace, but were only armistices, or 
truces, for a fixed number of years, the fact of the expiration of 
which, as among the great republics of old, was admitted to be 
a sufficient reason for the renewal of war. 



294 MODER]^ HISTORY. [a.d. 1660. 

For many years, however, no events occurred of sufficient mag- 
nitude to demand any particular notice. But at last, in 1660, a 
revival of civil dissensions in Transylvania led to the renewal of 
hostilities on a greater scale. Eagotzky, waiwode of that princi- 
pality, and prince or governor of several of the eastern provinces 
of Hungary, was killed in battle : and General Kemeny, who was 
appointed guardian to his youthful son, proving false to his trust, 
deposed his lawful sovereign and usurped the supreme power, 
and, as the Emperor was the admitted sovereign lord of his Hun- 
garian possessions, sought and obtained his sanction to the usurpa- 
tion, as prompted and ratified by the free choice of the Transylva- 
nians themselves. Ragotzky's family appealed to the Sultan for 
protection. The fact of the Emperor supporting Kemeny was suffi- 
cient to determine him to grant it ; and as the vigour of the grand 
vizier, Kiupriuli, had by this time completely re-established in- 
ternal tranquillity throughout the Ottoman dominions, he at once 
sent a force into the field, which he had reason to believe would 
prove irresistible. lu the spring of 1661, Kiupriuli himself, whose 
military talents were supposed to be fully equal to his civil capa- 
city, invaded Hungary at the head of 100,000 men, expecting to 
find no difficulty in overrunning the whole country ; but, fortu- 
nately for Christendom, the Emperor had in his service at this 
time an officer whose abilities were exactly suited to the emer- 
gency. Raymond, count of Montecuculi, was a Modenese by 
birth ; but, as that petty state could not afford him the opportuni- 
ties for military distinction which from his earliest years he covet- 
ed, as soon as he amved at manhood he had sought employment 
in the Imperial armies, in which he had by this time reached the 
highest rank. A diligent student of the classical histories, and of 
the campaigns of the different Greek and Roman commanders, he 
had taken Fabius for his model ; and now, on receiving the ap- 
pointment of commander-in-chief of the army on the Danube, he 
Joyfully accepted a post which gave him the opportunity of adapting 
the arts by which the cautious Roman had arrested the triumphs of 
the mighty conqueror of Cannee to modern warfare. His subsequent 
campaigns against Turenne on the Rhine seem to show that his 
genius was better calculated for defensive warfare than for the 
conduct of aggressive operations ; but few men have had a greater 
demand made on that fertility of resource and fortitude which are 
required to make a stand against superior forces, than his present 
employment imposed on Montecuculi. For the army which was 
placed under his orders did not exceed 15,000 men : the promise 
of reinforcements, which were freely made to him, were only so 
many hindrances and snares, since they were never fulfilled: 
while, to add to his difficulties, the Aulic Council of War, which 



A.D. 1C63.] INTERFEKENCE OF THE AULIC COUNCIL. 295 

sat at Vienna, had already commenced that fatal com'se of dic- 
tating to its generals in command in the field which, in different 
wars, has been the cause of such innumerable calamities to the 
nation. Yet, in the three campaigns which ensued, he never 
allowed the enemy to gain any important advantage over him ; 
and, though he found it impossible to prevent him from over- 
running some districts, and capturing several towns and fortresses, 
yet he counterbalanced these successes by more than one acquisi- 
tion of his own, and by inflicting no trifling loss on the Turks, 
through the skill with which he constantly detained them in 
unfavorable positions. In his first campaign, taking masterly 
advantage of the march of their main body into Transylvania, he 
drove back the division which lay in front of him,'though 
larger than his own army^ beyond the Teiss : and delivered the 
district to the west of that river from their ravages. The next 
year, though at its very beginning he lost his ally Kemeny, who 
was killed in a trifling skirmish (his death being, in Montecuculi's 
opinion, a judgment on his Calvinistic belief in predestination), he 
held the invaders at bay throughout, and even drove them to attempt 
to gain their ends by negotiation ; which, however, had his advice 
been taken, would never have been entered into. But it was not 
the least of his ' difficulties that the prime minister at Vienna, 
Prince Portia, was credulous enough to believe in the possibility 
of peace. It was in vain that the general assured him that the 
Turk aimed at nothing less than ' the monarchy of the world ; ' 
and that, with such a power, ' a good war was to be preferred to a 
bad peace.' The prince was bent on being deluded ; and, trusting 
in Kiupriuli's sincerity, in the autumn of 1662 actually detached 
some of the best troops of the empire into Italy : so that when, at 
the beginning of the next year, a Turkish army of 100,000 men 
crossed the Teiss, under Ali Pasha, Montecuculi had scarcely 6,000 
men available to oppose to them. What was he to do ? In his 
own words, He protested, he obeyed, he sacrificed himself. He 
gave up, that is to say, all his hopes of increasing his reputation 
by the achievement of any brilliant exploit, and limited his ambi- 
tion to that of saving the Empire, and of maintaining a defensive 
position, in which, as he was well aware, the consternation with 
which the authorities at Vienna regarded the advance and the 
strength of the enemy would cause the slightest mishap to be 
magnified into mortal disaster, for ' Fear is the microscope for all 
reverses,' and to be regarded as a proof of his own incapacity. 
Yet, out of these discouraging circumstances, his Fabian tactics 
wrought an addition to his renown. He took up a position at 
Altenburg, a small town between Presburg and Raab, where the 
rivers and fortresses around prevented the enemy from either sur- 



296 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1661. 

rounding him or ascertaining his strength ; and where the vicinity 
of the Danube enabled reinforcements and supplies of all kinds to 
be forwarded to him : and there he held the enemy at bay, till, in 
the autumn, he fell back to the Isle of Schut ; which, in his judg- 
ment, was a still more favorable position, from the command 
which it gave him of both banks of the river. 

He was thus able to concert and combine his movements with 
those of other commanders, who, throughout the winter, were has- 
tening to the protection of the capital ; while the natural advan- 
tages of the position were so great that, even when the enemy 
had ascertained the weakness of his force, they were unable to 
attack it with advantage: and he derived some encourage- 
ment from seeing how little the grand vizier was able to profit 
by his superiority of numbers. He had reason to complain, as 
in his Memoirs he does complain, that the Aulic council was not 
more judicious than the vizier. On the contrary, the members 
seemed quite unable to learn from experience ; and there could 
hardly be a greater proof of their incompetence than the fact that, 
inspite of his own extraordinary success in baffling the enemy, at 
the opening of the next campaign they divided his command ; and, 
while the Turks were still within sight of Vienna (for the Isle of 
Schut which they surrounded is barely six leagues from that 
city), actually detached above 20,000 men to the borders of 
Styria. But the commanders of that force, which was made up 
of troops from many different states, quarrelled among themselves: 
their disunion ruined all their operations, and, after a month or 
two had been wasted in continual quarrels, the authorities of 
Vienna found it necessary to transfer Montecuculi to the command 
of that army, that he might restore order by his superior authority. 
His mere arrival at head quarters was sufficient, since all deferred 
to his pre-eminent talents. And he had reason to hope for a more 
prosperous issue to the campaign, since he had hardly joined be- 
fore he received considerable reinforcements which put him almost 
on an equality in point of numbers with the enemy. For the 
danger to which Vienna had been exposed in the preceding winter 
had roused other nations to exert themselves to check the further 
progress of a foe who seemed to threaten all Christendom. The 
Pope, with most of the Italian princes, and the king of Spain, had 
sent large contributions of money, and supplies of various kinds ; 
while the king of France, surmounting his habitual jealousy of the 
Empire, had furnished a division of 6,000 veteran troops under the 
Marquis de la Feuillade. By the middle of July Montecuculi had 
60,000 men under his banner, a force not very inferior in number 
to that of the Pasha, though the advantages of position were not 
now on his side. The Turkish commander-in-chief was Ali Pasha. 



A.D. 1661.] THE BATTLE OF ST. GOTHARD. 297 

a general of greater skill and enterprise tlian Kiupriuli. And 
he had posted his army on rising ground, with its flanks pro- 
tected by hills and woods, while those wlio had commanded the 
Imperialists before Montecuculi arrived, had encamped in a low 
and level plain, almost wholly within range of the Turkish 
batteries, so that to protect his men from the pasha's fire he was 
compelled to have recourse to what he calls a new device in war, 
and, instead of erecting redoubts, to cut trenches and pits to shelter 
them. During the latter part of July the two armies were facing 
one another on opposite sides of the Raab, a river which falls into 
the Danube at the town of the same name, a short distance below 
Presburg: moving up and down its banks, and manoeuvring, the 
Turk, witb the object of crossing the river at some of its numer- 
ous fords ; the Imperial general, with the resolution to prevent 
bim. The last days of the month were passed in constant skir- 
mishes varied by heavy cannonades : and Montecuculi, seeing from 
the pasha's movements that he was resolved no longer to delay a 
general battle, made careful and novel preparations for it ; ming- 
ling companies of infantry musketeers with his cavalry, and issuing 
tke most precise orders to every division and regiment, especially 
instructing both musketeers and artillerymen not to fire all 
together, but line after line, and battery after battery, so that the 
enemy might have no respite 5 enjoining the cavalry not to un- 
cover the infantry by a pursuit of the enemy when they should be 
put to flight ; and ordering, on pain of infamy and instant death, 
that no one should quit his ranks to plunder. It indicates a curi- 
ous barbaric peculiarity in the Turkish mode of fighting, that he 
thought it necessary also to caution his men not to be disconcerted 
at their screams and yells. And having thus made all his arrange- 
ments, he waited with confidence for the moment of testing them 
in action. It was not long delayed ; the remissness of an officer 
to whom the guard of one of the fords had been entrusted, en- 
abled Ali to pass a strong detachment across the river near the 
convent of St. Gothard, from which the battle which ensued has 
taken its name, on the evening of the thirty-first; other squadrons 
crossed before daybreak on the first of August, and by nine 
o'clock in the morning the main body had descended to the edge 
of the stream at a point where it was unusually narrow, showing 
an evident intention to force the passage. While the two armies 
confronted each other, an incident in something of the old spirit 
of chivalry seemed to both an omen of the coming fortune of the 
day. A young Turkish officer of one of the squadrons which had 
already reached Montecuculi's side of the river, started from his 
ranks, and brandishing his scimitax, defied the bravest of the 
Christian knights to single combat. Unable to brook the insult. 



298 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 16fi4. 

a knight of the House of Lorraine obtained leave of his commander 
to accept the challenge, and, in the sight of both armies, unhorsed 
and slew his antagonist, and led away his charger, an Arab of 
great beauty, in triumph as a trophy of his victory. 

Not daunted, however, by this evil augury, the Turkish regi- 
ments on the other side began to cross the river, and a battle of 
extreme stubbornness ensued. Their first attack was directed 
against the Imperial centre, where the line was weakest, both in 
the number and quality of the troops, which were but newly 
enlisted, and two or three regiments were broken ; but Monte- 
cuculi in person brought up some of his veterans to their sup- 
port, and succeeded in rallying them ; while at the same time 
he sent the Marquis of Baden round with some fresh battalions to 
fall on the flank of the assailants. The marquis executed his task 
with brilliant gallantry and success, the weight of his charge 
forcing the battalions on which he fell back to the very bank of the 
river. And presently as the vizier still persisted in his plan of 
accumulating the whole weight of his attack on the centre, de la 
Feuillade brought up his French division on the other flank, and 
dashing among the Turks with all the impetuous ardour of his 
nation, made a terrible havoc among their dense brigades, dis- 
ordered as they were bj'' this new attack from an unexpected 
quarter. But the brave Modenese had met with a worthy antago- 
nist in A]i. While the battle was thus raging in the centre, the 
pasha conceived the plan of retaliating Montecuculi's manoeuvre 
on himself ; and he, too, detached divisions of his army to cross 
the river at different points above and below the scene of action, 
and to outflank the Christians in their turn. It was a bold and 
well-imagined step, but it required time ; and Montecuculi, who 
at once divined his object, calculated that he had time to win the 
battle before it could take effect. Contenting himself with send- 
ing some weak battalions to delay the passage and advance of 
these new assailants, he collected the rest of his army into the 
form of a crescent, and brought it all together on the divisions 
which were still engaged in their attack upon his centre, confident 
in his power to crush them before the others could arrive to take 
part in the conflict, in which case they would only reach the field 
to find themselves unsupported, and so to fall easy victims to the vic- 
torious Austrians, In his judgment his prospects of success were 
the greater, that his army was composed of regiments of different 
countries, whom he had carefully separated, in order that national 
emulation should inflame their courage. And it did appear as 
if the French on the left, and the Suabians in the centre, and 
the Lorrainers on the right, were stimulated to more than their 
usual daring by their desire to make the victory seem to be won by 



A.D. 1683.] THE EEVOLT OF TEKELI. 299 

their individual prowess. Before their fierce, generous rivalry the 
Turks at last quailed, were thrown into disorder, and finally were 
beaten back at all points, retreating in confusion to the river, in the 
hope of putting it between themselves and their pursuers ; but 
some heavy rain which had fallen had raised it since the morning ; 
many regiments missed the fords and were drowned, others, seeing 
their fate, halted, too panic stricken to make any further resistance. 
And the victory was won. The slaughter was immense, but few 
prisoners were taken, for little quarter was asked or given : the 
booty, too, was prodigious, for those who had fallen were the flower 
of the Sultan's army, his chosen body-guard ; and their uniforms 
and their arms, splendid with gold and jewels, were alone sufficient 
to enrich the whole Austrian army. So decisive was the victory, 
and so greatly did the Turks feel their means of carrying on the war 
crippled by it, that they, who hitherto had been the arbiters of 
peace, granting it at the solicitation of those they had conquered, 
were now reduced to sue for it ; though so unskilfully did the 
Emperor's ministers use their success that they did not so much 
add to their master's strength by the advantages which they 
secured to him at the expense of the enemy, as they weakened 
him by alienating further a most important section of his own sub- 
jects, the Hungarians, who complained, not altogether without 
reason, that their interests had been greatly overlooked in many 
of the arrangements for the future defence of the country, of which 
the burden would fall on them, while the chief benefit would 
accrue to Austria. 

Such however as the treaty was, it was like its predecessors, 
only a twenty years' truce, of which Leopold endeavoured to 
avail himself by remodelling the military system of the Empire, 
that, in the renewal of war, which he had no doubt that the 
Turks would recommence as soon as they had recovered from their 
late defeat, he might meet the emergency with improved resources. 
He lived to reap the benefit himself of his reforms in the triumphs 
of Zenta and Blenheim : but again he offended the Hungarians by 
the alterations which he introduced into their constitution : making 
the crown of that kingdom hereditary by his own sovereign autho- 
rity, and describing this change, not as a reform in the interests of 
the whole Empire, but as a punishment of the Hungarians for the 
general favour which they had shown to a recent conspiracy set 
on foot by some of their principal nobles, who, as Leopold believed, 
had even planned his own assassination. They rose in a fresh and 
more general insurrection, placing themselves under the leadership 
of Emeric Tekeli, a young noble of great courage and talent, and 
inflamed by personal injuries to desire to revenge himself on the 
Emperor v/ho had confiscated his father's estates for rebellion^ and 



300 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.u. 1683. 

whose tribunals had refused him the restoration of them. He was 
joined by a large body of Protestants also from several provinces, 
whom Leopold, with strange impolicy, just at this time exasperated 
by instituting a severe persecution of their ministers in so many 
districts that his conduct seemed to show a purpose of entirely 
suppressing their religion throughout the Empire; so that Leopold 
perceived that he should have need of all his resources to crush 
him : and, with this feeling, as the truce of 1664 with the Porte 
was in the point of expiring, he himself condescended to solicit 
its renewal. If he expected his request to be granted, he must 
have been singularly blind to all the recent proceedings of the 
Turks ; who for several years had been constantly infringing 
different provisions of the treaty in a manner which seemed to 
indicate a desire to provohe Austria herself into annulling it : 
Avhile, if he anticipated a refusal, the act of preferring a petition 
which was not likely to be granted, was in itself a most impolitic 
avowal of weakness. As such, the Sultan looked upon it as an 
encouragement of his own designs ; and was so far from consenting 
to prolong the truce, that, even before it expired, he concluded an 
alliance with the Hungarian rebels ; and in 1683, the new grand 
vizier, Cara Mustapha, the nephew of Kiupriuli, and his succes- 
sor both in his civil office and in the command of the army, 
invaded Hungary with a larger army than had ever before been 
seen in its plains ; crossed the Danube at Essek, and led 200,000 
men to attack Vienna itself. Such a host might have been sup- 
posed to be irresistible. For the utmost foi-ce which was at Leopold's 
disposal did not exceed 40,000 men ; but, fortunately their com- 
mander, the Duke of Lorraine, was a warrior of great genius, reso- 
lution and energy, and he speedily placed the city in a state of 
defence which secured it against any sudden assault. He even 
found time to surprise androut Tekeli, who had hoped to make him- 
self master of Presburg: and then returning to the capital, calmly 
waited for reinforcements which, he hoped, might enable him to 
turn the tables on the invader. For,- at the first intelligence of 
the league between the Sultan and his rebellious subject, Leopold 
had made treaties of alliance with the Electors of Bavaria and 
Saxony, and with the Polish monarch, John Sobieski, who, having 
established a brilliant reputation by the deliverance of his own 
country from the Turks through the great victory of Ohoczim, had 
subsequently been elected king ; and who now promised to come 
to the aid of the Emperor against an enemy, who, if he should 
succeed in crushing or dismembering the Empire, would certainly 
renew his attacks on Sobieski's own dominions. Forty thousand 
men were the force which he agreed to furnish ; but the emer- 
gency was too pressing for him to wait till that number was com- 



A.D. 1683.] THE EATTLE OF VIENNA. 301 

pleted, for Vienna was already invested on three sides, and, as 
soon as lie had collected 3^000 cavalry, he quitted Cracow, and 
hastened towards Vienna, leaving orders for the rest of his army 
to follow him with all possible speed. At the beginning of 
September he joined the gallant Duke of Lorraine; for the next 
few days reinforcements from his own territories, and from the 
different German States, poured in, till by the eleventh the two 
princes found themselves at the head of nearly 80,000 men. The 
disparity of numbers was still very great; but they learnt that 
Cara Mustapha had fixed the next morning for the storm of the 
city, and it seemed that the only hope of safety for the capital of 
the Empire lay in their co-operating with the garrison, and falling 
on the rear of the attacking columns, while they should be occu- 
pied by the assault of the ramparts. It was a felicitous idea ; 
prompted partly by the reliance which they both justly placed 
on the vigour and skill of Count Starenberg-, the governor ; and he 
did not deceive them. He made manful head against the over- 
whelming battalions which swarmed up to the gates ; and, while the 
whole efforts of the besiegers were concentrated on the foe before 
them, suddenly Sobieski and the duke fell on their rear ; the Turks 
were surprised, panic stricken, and broken in a moment. What 
ensued could hardly be called a battle : it was a rout, in which the 
Turks lost everything ; all their artillery, their standards, among 
which was a sacred ensign reported by tradition to have belonged 
to Mahomet himself; all the supplies of money, ammunition and 
provisions needful for so prodigious an army ; even the personal 
decorations and jewels of the grand vizier, who was the first to 
set the example of flight, and never stopped till he had put the 
Raab between himself and his conqueror. Sobieski wrote to his 
queen, ' The grand vizier has left me his heir, and I inherii 
millions of ducats. When I return you Avill not reproach me as the 
wives of the Tartars reproach their husbands : " ' You are not a 
man, because you have come back without booty." ' To the Pope 
he imitated the language, as he flattered himself that the celerity 
of hif} achievement had emulated the rapid progress, of Csesar ; 
sending him the banner of Mahomet, which had been among his 
trophies, and the brief boast Vem, vidi, vici, as the explanation of 
the means by which it had been procured. 

In strict truth the Duke of J^orraine had contributed as much as 
the king, or even more, to this great triumph ; but Sobieski's 
rapid march had fixed the eyes of Europe mainly on himself, and 
as his arrival had been the event which made it possible to fight 
the battle, it was to him that the principal share of the glory 
accrued in the eyes of the world. The Viennese hailed him as 
their deliverer; the only exception to the warmth with which ha 



302 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1687. 

was greeted being afforded by the Emperor himself, who conceived 
that his dignity as the successor of the Csesars would be lowered 
if he should condescend to receive as his equal one whose autho- 
rity depended on the election of the people, and, fearing lest, if he 
himself should be seated on his Imperial throne, Sobieski might 
expect a similar honour, insisted on meeting his deliverer on horse- 
back where, as he conceived, less notice would be taken of any 
breach of etiquette. After following up his blow, by pursuing the 
beaten army, across the Danube, inflicting a defeat on them 
in the open field, expelling them from Gran, which they had 
held ever since the beginning of the century, and finally from 
Hungary itself, Sobieski returned to his own country, deeply dis- 
gusted at the ungrateful meanness of his ally ; and thus verifying 
a remark which Montecuculi had recorded in his Memoirs several 
years before, that the performance -of such a service as he had 
done to the Emperor usually leads to mutual ill-will, since he 
who has conferred the benefit naturally looks for gratitude, and he 
who has received it is more mortified at having needed it than 
thankful for his deliverance from danger. 

But the victory of Sobieski did not bring peace as that of 
IMontecuculi had done. The war continued with prodigious exer- 
tions on both sides; the Duke of Lorraine showing, four years 
afterwards, that he needed no foreign aid to enable him to gather 
laurels ; when on the same field of Mohacz which, above a century 
and a half before, had witnessed the triumph of Solyman, he 
effaced the memory of Lewis's disastrous death by a victory so com- 
plete, that not even St. Gothard had dealt such slaughter among 
the Turkish ranks, nor had the rout of Vienna enriched the con- 
querors with such ample booty. The fortune of the Infidel was 
evidently on the decline ; and every reverse that his arms sus- 
tained encouraged fresh enemies to declare against him. The 
Venetians saw the opportunity of avenging the loss of Candia, 
and o'ferran the Morea; the Russians, a nation just beginning to 
emerge from barbarism, invaded the Crimea; the Poles once 
more descended into Hungary ; and in the five or six years which 
followed the second battle of Mohacz, the Porte was gradually 
s1 ripped of all the acquisitions which had been won by a century 
of successful warfare. Disasters under such a government as that 
of Turkey often produce revolutions; and so it happened in 
this instance. The Sultan revenged himself on his officers, be- 
heading his grand vizier, though married to his own daughter, 
and condemning several of the chief pashas to the bowstring; but 
the nobles wreaked their indignation on the Sultan himself; de- 
posing him, and placing his brother Solj^man II. on the throne. 
But still the Turks gave way before their daily increasing enemies, 



A.T>. 1687.] EISE OF PEINCE EUGENE. 303 

till, at the beginning of 1695, a new Sultan, Mustapha II. (for 
Solyman liad died within two years of his accession), resolved to 
make a vigorous effort to arrest the downfall of the Mahometan 
power. He would not trust his viziers or pashas, but took the 
command of his army in person, and, at the first opening of the 
spring, crossed the Danube, and invaded Hungary with above 
100,000 men. In his first two campaigns he gained some not un- 
important advantages over the Imperial army, led by the Elector of 
Saxony ; but his success ruined him. The Emperor saw the ne- 
cessity of entrusting the command to a new general ; and had the 
discernment to select for the post a young officer, who, though he 
had never yet enjoyed a chief command, had, in subordinate situa- 
tions, given more than one proof of great military abilities. Like 
Montecuculi, he was a foreigner ; and he had been, it might almost 
be said, driven into the service of the Emperor by mortifica- 
tions inflicted on him by those from whom he originally looked, 
as he reasonably thought that he had a right to look, for ad- 
vancement. 

Prince Eugene of Savoy, as he was usually called from the 
circumstance of his father, the Comte de Soissons, being a grand- 
son of a former Duke of Savoy, was born at Paris, in 1663 : his 
mother being Olympia Mancini, one of Mazarin's nieces, whose 
charms had at one time led King Louis himself to contemplate 
sharing his throne with her. At Paris he was bred up as a French 
noble ; and, not being the eldest son, was destined by his family 
for the church, though he himself declared his preference for a 
military life. But he soon found that in neither line was any 
patronage or favour to be expected by him in France. For some 
reason or other, Louis had conceived a personal dislike towards 
him ; though not often wittj'', he found a subject for jesting on 
the prince's delicate complexion and light-hearted disposition. 
Eugene, he said, was too girl-like for a soldier, too gallant and 
gay for a churchman, and on these pleas he first refused him a 
troop of horse, and then rejected the application of his friends for 
an abbacy. Few jokes have been more dearly paid for. Eugene 
quitted France ; Louvois, who also regarded him with ill-will, con- 
gratulating himself that they should hear no more of him. But 
the great secretary's prophecy was falsified. The young prince, 
full of indignation, silently made a vow to return with a sword in 
his hand ; and before the end of the reign France had bitter cause 
to acknowledge that he had kept his word. He crossed over to 
Germany, and entered the Imperial service as an officer on the staff" 
of the Duke of Lorraine, in time to witness the great victory of 
Vienna, and to be amused by the pompous uneasiness with which 
Leopold returned thanks to the King of Poland for his delivera ncc. 



304 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1687. 

Tbe campaigns whicli ensued were a good school for a young 
soldier; there was no better master of the art of war then alive 
than the Duke of Lorraine; and Eugene shewed an admirable 
aptitude at profiting by his lessons. He not only learnt how to 
employ the different kinds of troops, cavalry, infantry, and 
artillery ; but he also acquired an insight into the weaknesses of 
the Turkish military system, and conceived a great contempt 
for their indecision in moments of difficulty, their slowness in 
manoeuvres, and their general want of strategic and tactical skill. 
In many of the subsequent operations of the next few years he 
greatly distinguished himself; he commanded a regiment of 
dragoons at Mohacz ; and for his gallantry on that day was re- 
commended to the special favour of the Emperor by the duke 
himself. A year or two afterwards he was transferred to the 
north of Italy, serving in conjunction with his cousin, the Duke 
of Savo}^, against Catinat, who conceived a high opinion of his 
abilities, and sent such a report of them to Louis, that that 
monarch tried to lure him back to his service by the offer of a 
marshal's staff. But it was not as a French officer that Eugene 
was resolved to carry his arms into France ; he rejected the king's 
offer; and, in the summer of 1G97, had his loyalty to the Emperor 
rewarded by being appointed, to retrieve the disasters of the Saxon 
prince, as commander-in-chief of the army on the Danube. 

He hastened joyfully to the scene of action. His force was 
numerically far inferior to that of the Sultan, but he reckoned on 
making up for the deficiency by the promptitude of his decision 
and the celerity of his movements. At the end of August he 
joined his army at Zenta on the Teiss, a fortress about fifty miles 
above Peterwaradin, when he found that Mustapha had already 
taken and burnt Titul ; and was designing to cross the Teiss, and 
descend towards the Danube, with the object of taking under his 
command another division, with which the grand vizier was 
awaiting him in Servia, and investing Peterwaradin itself. Eugene 
resolved to prevent his advance in any direction ; acting, while 
the Sultan was preparing to act, he seized the bridges over the 
river, and saved that great town. The Sultan^ baffled in his first 
design, brought the grand vizier up to Zenta, with the intention 
of attacking Sezedin, a considerable town a few miles higher up 
the Teiss ; but Eugene thought Sezedin a place of even greater im- 
portance than Peterwaradin, and determined rather to risk a battle 
than abandon it. But once more the inherent viciousness of the 
Imperial system threatened to neutralise the genius of its general. 
Detaching a few battalions to reinforce the garrison, he was pre- 
paring to attack the enemy with the remainder, when he received 
a positive injunction from the Emperor himself, forbidding him to 



A.D. 1687.] THE BATTLE OF ZENTA. 305 

fight under any circumstances. Had lie been a man of ordinary 
resolution, the enemy would have been saved and the Empire 
ruined ; but his loyalty to the prince whom he had adopted for 
his sovereign was not only fervent, but sincere and disinterested. 
He was not insensible to the personal risk in which a disregard of 
so peremptory a command might involve him ; he well knew the 
punctilious narrow-mindedness of Leopold ; but he also felt that he, 
on the spot, was a better judge than the whole Aulic council could 
possibly be at Vienna of the chances of success, and of what was due 
to himself and to the army which he commanded. In his judg- 
ment, his own honour and the safety of his soldiers depended on 
his disol^eying the orders he had received. He put the despatch 
in his pocket; and, riding towards the Teiss to reconnoitre the 
enemy's movements, saw, with delight, that they were at that 
moment crossing the river; that one or two divisions had already 
reached his side of the stream, and that, as there was but one 
narrow bridge, some hours would elapse before their whole force 
could be reunited. He formed his plans in a moment. Galloping 
back to his camp, he placed himself at the head of a body of 
cavalry, and fell like a thunderbolt on some Turkish regiments 
which were slowly disengaging themselves from the bridge, and 
getting into order. Pie knew (to quote his own description of his 
movements) that he had not Oatinat to deal with, and therefore 
did not fear to venture on a complicated set of operations which 
the skilful Frenchman would have easily disconcerted, but which 
were quite sufficient to bewilder the Turk. While advanc- 
ing himself, he ordered the commanders of his wings to wheel 
round upon the enemy when he was attacking in front, so as 
to cut off their retreat; and the artillery to open fire on the 
bridge itself, and on some works which had been erected for its 
protection. In little more than an hour the battle was over. 
The divisions which had crossed were driven back in headlong 
confusion towards the bridge. Their comrades, which were 
on the bridge hastening to join them, were hampered by the re- 
treating and disordered masses, and were presently blended with 
them in inextricable confusion ; while the triumphant Imperialists 
pressed with steady resolution on the whole crowd. In froi^t of 
it, and on it, the Turks were helplessly slaughtered ; thousands, to 
escape the swords of the Austrians, threw themselves into the 
I'iver, but there was little safety in so rapid a stream for men 
encumbered with arms; and 10,000 are believed to have been 
drowned in the attempt. 20,000 fell by the sword ; and 4,000 
prisoners were living trophies of the victory. When, the next 
day, which was the anniversary of the battle of Vienna, the con- 



306 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1687. 

queror reviewed his own army, be found that liis triumpli had 
cost him less than 1,000 men. 

But it had nearly cost himself the whole of his subsequent 
glory. He returned, full of exultation, to Vienna,- not to be 
received with honour, but to be put under arrest for disobedience 
of the Imperial commands. He even learnt that it was intended 
to bring him before a couri^martial, and that not only his com- 
mission, but his life, was in danger. But others heard the strange 
intelligence as well as he. The citizens of Vienna rose in crowds, 
and offered to rise in arms to protect him ; and, afraid of provoking 
a general insurrection, and perhaps a little ashamed of having 
given such a reception to one whom everyone but himself 
regarded as the gi-eat glory, if not the savioui*, of the Empire, the 
Emperor restored him his sword, and replaced him in his command. 
Eugene, however, had too lively a sense of the danger to which he 
had just been exposed to consent to resume his post, except on the 
condition of being left to conduct his operations absolutely at his 
own discretion for the future: but, in, fact, his late achievement 
had put an end to the war, Zenta had not only humbled the 
pride of the Sultan, but had inflicted a fatal blow on his strength, 
He sued for peace ; and, before the end of the year, a treaty was 
signed at Carlovitz, which though, like preceding treaties, in name 
only a truce for a fixed period was a severe and enduring check 
to the aggressive power of the Porte. The Sultan not only gave 
up Transylvania, with the greater part of the districts in Hungary 
which had furnished the pretexts for previous wars, but he made 
cessions also to Russia, to Poland, and to Venice. The attempt 
of his successor, Achmet III., to retrieve the fortunes of his house, 
only led to his suffering at the hands of the still invincible Eugene 
a defeat at Peterwaradin, hardly less decisive than that of Zenta. 
And though, in the hostilities which were renewed from time to 
time throughout the century, the Sultan's armies achieved more 
than one brilliant success, the general result of the whole warfare 
has been a steady falling back of the Infidel before Christian civi- 
lisation; so that at the present day the very existence of the 
Turkish Empire as an independent power may. be said to depend 
on fjie forbearance or the policy of the nations which for two cen- 
turies and a half she kept in a state of continual uneasiness and 
.alarm.' 

1 The authorities on which the Philip II., Coxe's House of Austria, \ 
author has chiefly relied for the and the Memoirs of Montecuculi^aES^^^,v^ 
preceding chapter are Prescott's Prince Eugene. 




A.D. 1688.J VOLTAIEE ON LOUIS XIV. 307 



y 



CHAPTER XIV. 
A.D. 1688—1715. 

VOLTAIRE has called the year 1679, which witnessed the 
conclusion of the peace of Kimeguen, the crowning point of 
Louis's glory ; while, on' the same page, he admits that the 
country in general did not permanently acquiesce in, nor adopt, 
the surname of 'the Great,' which the city of Paris, in its exulta- 
tion, formally conferred on him.* Certainly, up to that moment, 
his reign had been an uninterrupted series of triumphs in war and 
diplomacy. And the wars in which he had hitherto been engaged, 
though not free from the charge of unprovoked aggression for the 
sole object of territorial aggrandisement, were not more unjusti- 
fiable than many others which have been waged by other poten- 
tates without exposing them to any peculiar reproach. History 
and posterity are lenient to such violations of strict justice and 
humanity. But his successes had intoxicated him. They had 
inflamed his natural arrogance till he had become imbued with a 
notion that the elevation which he had attained had exalted him 
above all the restraints which ordinary sovereigns acknowledge ; 
and the foreign policy which he adopted, and the wars which he 
carried on during the rest of his reign, show not only the wanton- 
ness of his ambition, but his utter faithlessness, his habitual dis- 
regard of treaties, in some instances the malignant revengefulness 
of his disposition, his merciless cruelty, and, more ignoble than all, 
his personal cowardice. He did not scruple to avow that his 
bombardment of Genoa had no other object but his own glory, 
that he might avenge on the republic her ancient connection with 
Spain. In the same spirit, when he had compelled the Algerinea 
to release their Christian captives, he remitted the Englishmen 
who were found among them to slavery, to revenge himself for the 
check which the Tnple Alliance had formerly given to his career 
of victory ; and, in mere headstrong vain-gloriousness, he even 
quarrelled with and insulted the Pope, insisting on privileges for 
his ambassador at Rome, which the Emperor and every other sove- 

^ Steele de Louis XIV, c. 13. 



308 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1688. 

reign in Europe liad renounced ; and threatening liim witli war, 
for the purpose of forcing into dioceses, with which he had no pre- 
tence to interfere, candidates who, by the constitution of the 
Romish Church, could not he legally appointed to them. 

Indeed, his first principle seemed to be, not only that the most 
established rights of all other sovereigns were to yield to his will, 
but that princes whiD could not bring- powerful armies into the 
field had no rights at all. In revenge for the disappointment of 
one of his schemes for the extension of his dominions, he even kid- 
napped and imprisoned the minister of a foreign state, violating 
the law of nations in his person in a manner which, till the days 
of Napoleon, had no parallel. His acquisitions had not all been 
made by force of arms. He had purchased the great city of Stras- 
burg of its own magistrates ; and he hoped, by the same means, to 
acquire the important fortress of Casal, in Piedmont, of which 
France had once before made herself mistress during his father's 
reign, but which had since been restored to its natural sovereign, 
the Duke of Mantua, As the whole province was a fief of the 
Empire none of its towns could be alienated without the Emperor's 
consent. But the duke, a profligate and necessitous prince, was 
willing to defraud his sovereign lord by a secret sale ; and Louis 
if he could by any means once obtain possession of the fortress, did 
not doubt his ability to keep it. The price was agreed upon ; but 
before the cession could take place, the duke's minister, Matthioli, 
though he himself had negotiated, if he had not originally sug- 
gested the bargain, through negligence or treachery, suffered the 
secret to transpire ; and Leopold at once sent such a force into the 
neighbourhood as effectually prevented the entrance of the French 
garrison to which Casal was to have been surrendered. Louis was 
furious at being thus outwitted by acts similar to his own, and de- 
termined on revenge. By his orders, in May 1678, Matthioli was 
lured to a conference with some French officers, and was there 
seized and thrown into a dungeon at Pignerol. Such an act was 
as unexampled as it was lawless: and,. as even Louis could not 
venture so to brave public opinion, and the indignation of every 
statesman and sovereign in Europe, as to avoAV it, he endeavoured 
to keep his arrest secret from the whole world : and the means 
which he adopted for that purpose were of a character as original 
and singular as tliey were inhuman. He caused to be made for 
the prisoner a mask of black velvet, which he was never permitted 
to remove ; so that even his gaolers did not see his face. In pro- 
cess of time, M. St.-Mars, the governor of Pignerol, was removed 
to other prison fortresses, being finally promoted to the govern- 
ment of the Bastille ; and at each removal the unhappy Matthioli 
was also removed, that he might always remain in the custody of 



A.D. 1688.] THE MAN IN THE lEON MASK. 



309 



the only man to whom the secret was necessarily entrusted. In 
the records of the great state prison of the capital, he was regis- 
tered under the name of Marchiali, and there, without ever being 
indulged with the slightest relaxation of the rigour with which he 
was treated, he was confined till his death, in 1703.^ 

During the whole period which elapsed between the peace of 
Nimeguen and the rupture of that treaty in 1688, Louis was rest- 
less for war, and constantly making little attacks, now as we have 
already seen, on Genoa, at another time on Holland, once even on 
the Pope, from whom he wrested Avignon, and threatening when 
he was not fighting. One of the medals which at this time he 
caused to be struck in his own honour, bore the boastful inscription, 



1 The question who this prisoner 
was (who, from a misconception of 
the materials of which his mask was 
made, has always been called The 
Man in the Iron Mask, ' L'Homme 
ail Masque de Fer '), was for many- 
years shrouded in impenetrable mys- 
tery. The very existence of such a 
captive Avas Icnown but to few in his 
own day ; and it was mentioned by 
no French writer till, in 1751, Vol- 
taire published his lively sketch of 
the age of Louis XIV , many years 
after every one was dead who could 
have any personal knowledge of the 
subject. It is remarkable that, in- 
clined as Voltaire was to any state- 
ments which could give point or 
liveliness to his naiTative, he abstains 
from expressing any opinion on the 
question of who was the object of the 
strange precautions which he relates ; 
and contents himself with remarking 
that, at the time he was imprisoned 
(which he mistakes and antedates bj'' 
nearly twenty years), no person of 
importance disappeared in Europe. 
But others were less scrupulous or 
less judicious; and the most impro- 
bable and even impossible conjectures 
were hazarded on the subject. Some 
writers suggested that the victim was 
a Comte de Vermandois, a son, or a 
brother of Louis XIV., who cannot 
well have had any existence at all, 
since, at the time of this arrest, there 
was another Conite de Vermandois, a 
natural son of Henry IV., and go- 
vernor of Langiiedoc. Others named 
Fouquet, the disgraced minister of 
finance, who, several years before, 
had indeed iieen thrown into prison 
at Piguerol, but who, it was equally 



certain, died in that fortress in the 
spring of 1680. A third candidate 
■was set up in the person of the Duke 
of Beaufort, whom we have had occa- 
sion to mention as prominent in the 
rebellion of the Fronde, and who was 
killed at Candia in 1669, while serv- 
ing in a small force which was sent 
to the aid of the Venetian*. One 
writer even pronounced him to be the 
Sultan Mahomet IV., who was not 
deposed from his throne at Constan- 
tinople till 1687. And another, as if 
to outdo all rivals in the liveliness of 
his imagination, conceived that the 
Duke of Monmouth, whose execution 
the citizens of London believed that 
they witnessed in 1685, did onlj- die 
by proxy, having found a partisan of 
sufficient devotion to offer himself to 
the executioner's axe in his stead, 
and having induced James to father 
the delusion by consenting to be 
transferred to this secret and per- 
petual imprisonment in a foreign 
land. But, since Voltaire's time, 
letters of Catinat, the officer who 
arrested Matthioli, of St.-Mars, who 
had the uninterrupted charge of him, 
and of Louvois, under whose direc- 
tions they both acted, have been 
discovered and published ; and the 
question who the Man in the Iron 
Mask was, which was long as per- 
plexing to the curious as the identity 
of the English writer who choso to 
mask himself as the author of Junius, 
is now cleared up with as much 
certainty. He who doubts that 
Francis was the one, and Matthioli 
the other, may equally be pronounced 
incapable of estimating evidence. 



810 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1688. 

Nee pliiribus impar, to intimate that lie considered himself a 
match for the world in arms. And the pretexts on which he 
justified his declaration of war against the Emperor were so utterly 
trivial, that they seemed desig-ned to show that in reality he 
conceived himself to he placed ahove the necessity of accounting 
to the world for his actions, and that his own will and caprice 
Avere a sufficient law to himself and to all. He complained that 
the Emperor had not compelled the chapter of Cologne to yield to 
his dictates on the subject of the election of their archbishop : 
that the Emperor's brother-in-law had been invested by the Diet 
of the Empire with the Palatinate, to which he was unquestionably 
the male heir, but which Louis desired to have transferred to his 
sister-in-law, the Duchess of Orleans, who was also sister to the 
last elector; and, finally, he alleged his own fears that the 
Emperor intended to attack him, so soon as 'he should have made 
peace with the Sultan. According to St.-Simon the war, though 
long meditated, was at last precipitated by a personal quarrel 
between Louis and Louvois, who, too arrogant and unyielding in 
his temper to defer even to his sovereign, differed with him about 
the size of a window in the palace which the king was building 
at the Little Trianon, near Versailles, with such rudeness and 
pertinacity, that Louis was provoked into the most vehement 
reproaches; and the secretary, conceiving that he had lost his 
master's favour, hurried on the war, in order to give him something 
more important than windows to think about, and to render 
himself once more indispensable. 

We need not dwell on the details of the war; though, almost 
as soon as it began, our own country was involved in it, from the 
earnestness with which Louis espoused the cause of James, who, 
before the end of the same year, fled from his kingdom, and left 
his throne to his son-in-law, the Erench king's most determined 
and unwearied enemy; though it was against William that the 
fiercest battles of the whole war were fought, and though it was 
not concluded without his being formally recognised by his enemy 
as King of Great Britain and Ireland. But one or two incidents 
are worth recording as illustrative of the personal character of 
Louis himself, and of the extraordinary pitch' of servility and 
adulation at which even those of his subjects, whose offices and 
employments might most have been expected to place them above 
such meanness, had arrived. The Palatinate, as we have seen, 
had been one of the ostensible causes of the war ; that rich pro- 
vince was the first object of the French invasion, and the capture 
of Philipsburg was the first success that crowned the French 
arms. The news reacted Paris on the first of November, All 
Saints' Day, while the king was at church. Louvois, eager to 



^ 



A.i>. J. 681).] DESOLATION OF THE PALATINATE. 311 

maJre him forget the wrangle about the Trianon window, hastened 
into the church and up to the royal seat with the news. Louis 
stopped the preacher in the middle of his sermon, with his own 
voice announced the fall of the fortress to the congregation, and 
offered up an extemporaneous prayer of thanks for the achieve- 
ment. And then the preacher, being allowed to resume his 
sermon, so improved the occasion with a description of the visible 
favour shown by the Almighty to the king, as was equally seen 
in the success of his enterprises, and the beauty of his person,^^ 
that the whole congregation was dissolved in tears. 

Such a spectacle might excite a smile ; but the next exploits of 
the army of which the king was so proud, and of which his son, 
the Dauphin, was the nominal commander, though the real 
direction of the operations was entrusted to the Marshals Duras 
and Vauban, filled all Europe with horror. Furious at finding 
that all the minor German States ranged themselves on the side of 
the Emperor, that the King of Spain had joined the alliance ; and 
that his own treasury was so exhausted by his own measureless 
prodigality, that it was not without the greatest difficulty and the 
most ruinous expedients that money could be found to keep on 
foot the enormous force of 800,000 men, which were reckoned 
necessary to enable the country to face such a host of enemies, 
Louis resolved to revenge himself on those who were most in his 
power, and to lay waste the vrhole of that fair province of which 
his recent acquisition, Philipsburg, gave him, to a certain extent, 
the key. Tn the last war Turenne had greatly tarnished his fame 
by the devastation which he had spread through the Palatinate, 
burning unfortified towns and villages, carrying off" the crops, with 
the flocks and herds, and destroying all that he could not remove ; 
though he justified himself bythe necessities of his military position, 
as the commander of an army numerically far weaker than its foes. 
But the worst cruelties which the great marshal had committed 
were mercy ^ compared to those now perpetrated by Duras, in com- 
pliance with the express orders of the monarch, who looked upon 
himself as the pattern of chivalry and refinement. In the last 
days of the Carnival, while spending his own hours in revels and 
luxury, he issued orders to Duras to turn the whole pBOvince into 
a desert. Voltaire truly remarks, that the ferocity of the com- 
mand was not more conspicuous than its impolicy, since it was an 

1 Madame de Sevigne, under date incendie. L'Europe en eut horreur. 
November 3, 1668. Les officiers qui rexecutferent etaient 

2 ' Les flammes dont Turenne avait honteux d'etre les instrumens de cea 
brule deux villes et viiigt vil(af;;es dui-cte's.' — Voltaire's Siicle de Louis 
du Palatinat n'etaient que des etin- XIV, c. xvi. 

celles, en comparaison de ce dernier 



312 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1690. 

inTitation to his enemies to treat Iiis own pi-oyinces and cities in 
the same way. But Duras was a pitiless soldier, formed to carry 
out the injunctions of such a master. The Palatinate was a fertile 
and thickly peopled district. In the whole Empire none produced 
choicer wines, or heavier crops of corn, and half a million of 
peasants subsisted on the wages of the labour requisite to cultivate 
and gather in the various fruits of the earth. Suddenlj'^, and be- 
fore the severity of winter was abated, notice was given by the 
marshal that within three days all must quit their homes and seek 
another country ; that, at the expiration of that period their 
houses would be given to the flames, and that all persons, men 
and women alike, who should persist in remaining in their homes 
would be abandoned to the mercy of the soldiers. And the savage 
announcement was carried out with a relentless barbarity which 
exceeded even the threat. At the end of the three days farms, 
castles, villages, and towns were set on fire. The crops, just 
beginning to appear above ground, were ploughed up ; the vines 
were uprooted. Many of the cities, Heidelberg, Spires, and 
Worms were not only important from their size and wealth, but 
venerable also from many an historical recollection : they were 
burnt as remorselessly as the meanest village. Sometimes ordi- 
nary conflagration was too slow for the impatience of the destroyers, 
and mines were excavated to blow up au entire town by a single 
explosion. The population fully shared in the destruction which 
had fallen on their dwellings. Driven forth, in utter destitution, to 
seek a distant shelter in other provinces at the most inclement 
season of the year, the greater part of those who escaped the 
violence of the soldiers perished of cold or famine on their way. 
The French historians themselves admit that all Europe was 
struck with horror at such an unprecedented atrocity. But such 
were the only deeds in which Duras was calculated to shine. The 
Duke of Lorraine took Mayence before his face ; and it was only 
by his eagerness in acts of cruelty that he was able to preserve 
his master's favour. 

Again we may forbear a relation of all the separate events and 
battles of this war, which at this distance of time can have 
but little interest. Catinat, who was rapidly rising in reputation, 
which, however, he was at the same time tarnishing by a cruelty 
that seemed as if it were his object to rival Duras in the king's 
goodwill, gained great advantages in Piedmont, and made himself 
master of Nice : a town which, in the present generation, has again 
come under the power of Finance ; while the Due de Noailles 
achieved even greater successes in Spain, and treated the in- 
habitants of the districts through which his army passed with 



A.D. 1693.] LUXEjVIBOURG IN THE NETHEELANDS. 313 

still greater inliumanity, acting, as Diiraa had acted, under the 
express orders of Louis himself, whose relationship to the king ol 
Spain seemed to make him the more determined to revenge him- 
self on him and on his people for their disregard of his commands. 
But the most important scene of action was the Netherlands, 
where, as soon as his Tictory of the Boyne had ensured the sub- 
mission of Ireland, William took the command of the allied army ; 
and, though greatly inferior to the French commander-in-chief, 
the Duke of Luxembourg, in military skill, yet showed so un- 
daunted a fortitude amid disasters, and such indomitable energy in 
rallying his men after defeat, as prevented the duke from deriving 
any important results from his most brilliant successes in the field. 
When a king commanded the hostile armies, Louis thought it 
consistent with his dignity to appear to act the same part. In his 
eyes it was a piece of kingly policy to appropriate to himself as 
much as possible of the credit of the successes achieved by the 
genius of his servants, whether ministers in the cabinet or generals 
in the field. And in pursuance of this system, he accompanied 
Ijuxembourg's army while it was occupied in sieges which he could 
behold at a safe distance. He was present at the capture of Mons ; 
and, after the fall of Namur, he deposited the choicest of the 
spoils of that great city in Notre Dame, with great state, as the 
trophies of a triumph which he himself had gained over his un- 
wearied enemy. But, when Luxembourg, by his superior general- 
ship, had brought the British king's army into such a situation in 
the open field that its destruction seemed inevitable, he found a 
pitched battle too dangerous an experiment for his master's taste. 
In the campaign of 1693 a decisive victory was greatly needed to 
maintain for France the appearance of superiority in arms ; for the 
victory of Steinkirk in the previous autumn, as it had led to no 
results, had by no means effaced the impression made on Europe 
by the entire destruction of Louis's fleet at La Hogue in the same 
year. Accordingly, great exertions had been made to increase 
the army in the Netherlands ; and they had been attended with 
such success that in May Luxembourg had 120,000 men under his 
orders, while the utmost force which William could collect to 
resist him did not exceed 70,000. So irresistible did the French 
army seem that Louis, valorous at a distance, once more quitted 
Versailles for Flanders, to take the great marshal, as he wished his 
subjects to think, under his own command; to cover himself, as 
even the most courtly among them did not conceal that they did 
think, with lasting disgrace. To bring William to action, Luxem- 
bourg threatened Brussels and Liege, and his demonstrations had 
dvawn his antagonist, eager to save such important cities, into a 
15 



314 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1693. 

position from which, even in William's own opinion, he could not 
escape without a miracle.^ And it was with amazement and 
unspealfable shame that when, on T^ouis's arrival in the camp, he 
laid before him his own scheme for the campaign, which included 
an instant attack upon the allied army, whose disastrous defeat 
was absolutely inevitable, he learnt that the king disapproved of 
hia plan, and had formed a different design. Louis proposed to 
send the Dauphin, with 40,000 men and Marshal Boufflers under 
him, to the Rhine, and to return himself to Versailles without 
delay. It was in vain that Luxembourg threw himself on his 
knees to entreat him to abandon so dishonourable a purpose ; 
Louis was sufficiently alarmed to be resolute ; he returned to 
Versailles, detached a third of his army to a district where it 
could effect nothing, and left Luxembourg with the remainder to 
prove the soundness of his own calculations, and the groundless- 
ness of his royal master's most unkingly terror. 

A victory was now more necessary than ever to appease the 
discontent and indignation which were univei-sal. The very 
courtiers and fine ladies, who had followed Louis from Versailles 
to the camp, and fi'om the camp back to his secure palace, felt his 
return as a national disgrace ; the whole army, from the generals 
to the lowest troopers, gave free license of their tongues at his 
expense.** All looked to the marshal to efiace the stigma which 
the king had brought on their arms. And once more he showed 
himself a leader to whom the national honour might safely be 
confided. He out-manoeuvred William, inducing him to detach 
a large division to cover Liege, and on the nineteenth of July 
attacked him with a force hj more than one-half larger than his 
own. The battle which ensued, and which the English have 
named after Landen, a river which partly covered the flank of the 
allies, but to which the French have given the name of Neerwinden, 
from a village which was the key of William's position, is memo- 
rable as one in which artillery was but little employed, but which 
was decided in close combat by the sabre and bayonet* It was 

1 ' On a su depuis qu'il (le prince Tout ce qui revenait des ennemis 
d'Orang^e ecrivit plusieurs fois au n'etait guere plus scandaleux que ce 
princede Vaudemont, son amiintime, qui se disait dans les arme'es, dans 
qu'il etait perdu, et qu'il n'y avait les villes, a la cour meme par des 
que par un miracle qu'il en put echap- courtisans, ordinairement si aises de 
per.' — St,-Simon, i. 95, se retrouver a Versailles, mais qui se 

2 'L'efifet de cette retraite fut in- faisaient honneur d'en etre honteux.' 
eroyable jusque parmi les soldats et — St.-Simon, i. 99. 

meme parmi les peuples. Les officiers ^ It was the first general action in 
gen^raux ne s'en pouvaient taire Europe in whiclitlie attack was mada 
entre eux, et les officiers particuliers by the bayonet and sword alone. — 
en parlaient tout haut avec une Dalrymple's Memnirs of Great Sri- 
licence qui ne put etre contcnue. . . . tnin and Ireland, iii. 6. 2. 



A.D. 1695.] THE BATTLE OE NEERWINDEN. 315 

memorable, too, for the personal heroism of William himself, which 
he never displayed more brilliantly, and to which many of his 
regiments were principally indebted for their safe retreat. For 
the victory was decisive. The slaughter, as in a combat which, 
for the greater part of a summer's day, was fought hand to hand, 
was enormous ; and, as William's position had been very strong, 
was perhaps as great in the French as in the allied ranks. But, 
at last, he was driven back at every point ; and Luxembourg had 
never more fully gained the title of upholsterer of Notre Dame, 
which his admirers had given him. Eighty captured standards 
were despatched by him to Paris as the trophies of the day, and 
the silent condemnation of the timid king ; and the artillery, the 
ammimition, and the baggage of the defeated army, had also 
become his prizes. But his own loss had been above 10,000 men ; 
and Louis, who could not fail to be aware of the feelings which he 
himself had excited, confessed to himself that he could not afford 
many such victories, and began to feel, and to express a wish for 
peace. 

His desire was increased when at the beginning of 1695, 
Luxembourg, whose health had long been declining, died ; and 
when the Duke of Maine, his chief favourite among his illegitimate 
children, being sent as commander-in-chief of the army, proved 
himself his son by his inheritance of his fears ; and made himself 
equally the byword and scorn of the soldiery whom he baulked of 
an expected victory. But, in truth, though Louis still had valiant 
armies, with brave and skilful generals, the other resources for 
carrying on war were beginning to fail. The distress of all classes 
in every part of the kingdom was universal. The king's almost 
ceaseless wars had not been his only drain. Ever since he had 
arrived at manhood, he had been calling on his ministers to find 
him fresh supplies of money for his personal expenditure, his 
mistresses, his losses at the gaming table, his reviews, his 
buildings, public and private, as if his dominions and his subjects 
were one vast and inexhaustible mine. The disorderly temper 
of the Parisians had given him a dislike for the capital as a 
residence, and at Marly, at Versailles, at the Trianon, and at Fon- 
tainebleau, new palaces were constantly arising, or old ones were 
being enlarged, each surpassing the other in magnificence and 
costliness of decoration, as well as in those appliances of modem 
ease and comfort then first invented and introduced. Contrivances 
for warmth in the winter, for ventilation in the summer, seemed 
to equalise the seasons. Nature herself was subdued to make 
gardens and parks out of unwholesome swamps, rivers were diverted 
from their channels to supply cascades and fountains ; and within 
the. palaces, when finished, the luxury and prodigality of which 



316 MODERN HISTORY. [a.i). 1697. 

Louis set the example, outran all former traditions of dissipation. 
The very courtiers complained of the uninterrupted round of enter- 
tainments, which wearied hy endlessness and palled by their mono- 
tony. Even in dress the king contrived to spend the most 
enormous sums; among his tastes was a fondness for jewellery 
and trinkets, and his expenditure on diamonds alone is said to 
have amounted in the course of his reign to twenty millions of 
livres. The ingenuity of Colbert himself had been scarcely able 
to provide funds for such an insane extravagance ; but he had now 
been dead many years, and his successors had increased the bur- 
dens of the people without effecting any corresponding increase 
of the revenue. Even before the end of the former war the general 
misery of every class but the highest, had surpassed all record of 
the sufferings of any nation in modern times. A short time before 
the peace of Nimeguen, the celebrated English philosopher John 
Locke was travelling in France, and kept a daily journal of all the 
occurrences and, facts which seemed to him most worthy of atten- 
tion. He records that even the vine-dressers of the district round 
Bordeaux, the best paid labourers in the kingdom, could only earn 
threepence halfpenny a day : that their general food was rye and 
water ; that it was only on very rare occasions that they could 
procure a paunch or other refuse from the butcher's shop. In the 
more purely agricultural provinces, the condition of the peasantry 
was even worse ; and the distress was rapidly increasing, and was 
spreading upwards. The smaller landed gentry were suffering 
with a proportionate severity: numbers of their country houses 
were falling in ruins ; and even the castles of the nobles, though 
they were exempt from most of the taxes, equally showed signs of 
poverty and decay. Nor was the destitution confined to those 
who depended on the land. Merchants, shopkeepers, and artizans 
complained that their profits were eaten up by taxation. Worst 
of all was the condition of the inhabitants of the towns and 
parishes of the frontier provinces, which were occupied from time 
to time by parties of troops ; for the soldiers were billeted on every 
householder, and even those who never saw meat on their own 
tables were compelled to furnish every trooper with three meals 
of meat a day.^ It was not strange that some provinces broke 
into open insurrection at the approach of the tax-gatherer ; nor 
that the population itself began to dwindle away, and to supply, 
for the reinforcement of the army, not grown-up men, but youths 
and boys unable to bear the fatigues of a campaign. 

The war, therefore, could not be maintained : and, as on the 

1 A report of the state of the coun- shows that the distress had greatly 
try by Vauban at the end of the war iBcreased shice Locke's visit. 



A.D 1608.] THE PEACE OF EYSWICK. 317 

part of William and his allies it had tliroughout been only a war 
of self-defence, no obstacle was raised by any of them when, in 
the spring of 1697, Louis proposed a negotiation. He had endea- 
voured to bring about peace in a less kingly manner, by counten- 
ancing at least one of the Jacobite conspiracies for the assassination 
of William ; but the plots had been discovered, his agents had been 
hanged, and the vigilance of the English government was too 
fully awakened to tempt others to renew the design. A formal 
reconciliation was now, therefore, the only resource. And in the 
course of the autumn, a treaty of peace was signed at Eyswick, by 
which he gave up all the chief acquisitions which he had made 
during the war : acknowledged William as King of Great Britain, 
and pledged his honour not to countenance in any manner any 
attempt to subvert or disturb the existing government in these 
islands. He could hardly avoid feeling these conditions as* a 
humiliation. But, though it had been in some degree forced on 
him by the poverty which he had brought on the kingdom, he 
was so far from having learned moderation, that he had scarcely 
signed the treaty when he began to amaze Europe with a scene of 
extravagance more lavish than any of his former follies. He had 
the soul, not of a king, but of a master of ceremonies. He could 
not live without spectacles. Even in the first year of the war, 
when the attention and utmost efforts of all around him were 
concentrated on the military operations, he showed at least equal 
earnestness in superintending the bringing out of a play. At 
St.-Cyr, near Paris, Madame de Maintenon had recently esta- 
blished a school for the daughters of decayed nobles. Among the 
different branches of their education private theatricals had been 
established, with a view to forming their taste for poetry and art ; 
and, by way of combining the study of theology with that of ordi- 
nary literature, she had induced Racine to promise to compose 
a drama on some sacred subject. The fruit of this semi-royal 
mandate was the tragedy of ' Esther,' in which the imperious 
Madame de Montespan was shadowed under the name of the proud 
Vashti ; while the description of Esther, by whose charms she had 
been supplanted, was designed as a delicate compliment to 
Madame de Maintenon herself. The king took all the arrange- 
ments under his own management ; and not only wrote out with 
his own hand the names of those who were to be allowed the 
honour of witnessing the first representation, but, on the appointed 
evening, actually stationed himself at tlie door of the saloon, which 
had been fitted up as a theatre, with the list of spectators in one 
hand and his jewelled cane in the other, letting them in one by 
one, and himself pointing out the places allotted to them. 

And, as if on purpose to show that the distress which weighed 



818 MODEEN niSTORY. [a.d. 1698. 

down eveiy class of his subjects aifected neither his own purse nor 
his own feelings, he made the re-establishment of peace the occa- 
sion of a display more costly than any that had preceded it. As 
if the country had not been sated with the reality of war, at the 
beginning of the next year he assembled at Compiegne an army of 
60,000 men, and entertained the whole court with a series of 
reviews and sham fights, nominally for the instruction of his 
grandson, the young Duke of Burgundy, in military science ; but 
in reality for the gratification of his own insatiable taste for pomp 
and splendid wastefulness. The accomplished courtier, to whose 
lively pen we are indebted for so many details of the reign, is 
absolutely bewildered in attempting to describe the prodigal mag- 
nificence of which he was the witness. His memory is confused 
by the recollection ; the very language refuses to supply him with 
epithets of adequate A'ariety and force. It was ' gorgeous,' it was 
' dazzling,' it was even ' frightful.' ' The whole of the royal 
equipages, tents, furniture, and even plate, were new for the occa- 
sion ; and every noble, every officer of rank, every courtier, was 
expected to vie with his fellows in magnificence, as he valued the 
royal favour, and hoped to be admitted again at Versailles. For 
many of them tents were not sufficiently splendid. Wooden 
houses were erected, and furnished in a style surpassing the most 
splendid hotels of the capital. Ranges of kitchens, of stables, of 
pantries, of washhouses, formed a town of themselves. Aqueducts, 
fifty miles long, constructed for the occasion, brought water from 
the Seine, and from other rivers whose character stood high for 
the salubrity and purity of their waters. All the forests in the 
kingdom were ransacked for game : every sea that washed the 
coast was swept for its fish : and every road was blocked up by 
an endless train of couriers, purveyors, musicians, play-actors, 
tailors, dressmakers, wigmakers, upholsterers, and, above all, 
money-lenders. Every day brought round some fresh picture of 
military operations. One of the spectacles was a siege of Com- 
piegne itself. It was fortified for the. occasion with all the inven- 
tions of Vauban's skill. Ditches and moats were dug ; ramparts 
and castles were raised : guns and mortars were mounted : and, as 
soon as the works were finished, they were battered down again, 
with all the grand apparatus of breaching batteries, forlorn hopes, 
and storming parties, in the presence of the king, Madame de 
Maintenon, and the princesses and ladies of the court; whose 
satin and jewels presented a striking and somewhat ludicrous con- 
trast to the roar of cannon, the flash of bayonets, and all the mimic 

1 'Jamais spectacle si eclatant, si eblouissant, il le faut dire si efFray- 
ant.' — St.- Simon, ii. 202. 



t.D. 1698.1 THE PAETITION TEEATY. 319 

pageantry of war. After several weeks of operations of this 
costly kind, the exhibition ended with a grand sham fight, the 
arrangements of which, however, in professional eyes were some- 
what disconcerted by the unwillingness of General Rose, who 
commanded one division, to be defeated, under the eyes of the 
ladies, by Marshal Boufflers, who led the force to which victory 
had been preassigned : but his scruples only increased the mirth. 
The next day the king returned to Versailles, highly pleased with 
himself and with the show. The officers who had contributed to 
it were less gratified. In spite of the presents which Louis dis- 
tributed among them, there was hardly one who had not been 
ruined by the expenditure which had been forced upon him. The 
expenses, too, which had fallen on the royal treasury, as was gene- 
rally computed, had exceeded one of Luxembourg's campaigns ; 
and, if Louis could congratulate himself on the display of his 
magnificence and power, few of his subjects who had borne part 
in it could remember it without bitter and enduring distress. 

He had scarcely returned to Versailles, when he concluded a 
second treaty with William, which, as he never intended to keep 
it, he m.ust have foreseen would produce a renewal of European 
war. It has been mentioned that, on his marriage with the 
Infanta, he had renounced for himself and all his descendants all 
claim to any portion of the Spanish dominions, under an}' circum- 
stances. His father, on his marriage, had made a similar renun- 
ciation; as, in fact, had every sovereign who, since the beginning 
of the century, had married a Spanish princess, with the exception 
of the present Emperor Leopold, and his father Ferdinand III. 
Of Ferdinand no such stipulation had ever been required; and 
that which Leopold himself had published had never been legally 
ratified by the Spanish Cortes, and was invalidated by the omis- 
sion of that formality'-. In the opinion of the Spanish lawyers, 
therefore, Leopold himself, as inheriting from his mother, or his 
children by his first empress,^ the Infanta Margaret, were the 
heirs to the reigning King of Spain, Charles II., who had neither 
cliildren, brothers, nor uncles : and, if Leopold's renunciation were 
invalid, as it certainly was, the grandson and representative of 
Margaret, the Electoral Prince of Bavaria, had manifestly the 
preferable claim. 

The object of the different renunciations was evident. The 
Spanish Cortes, remembering the position of comparative insig- 

1 Leopold had had three wives. Joseph I. and Charles VI., who suc- 

The Infanta Margaret had only left cessively succeeded him on the 

one daughter, wife of the Elector of Imperial throne, but who could have 

Bavaria; his second wife _ had no no title to that of Spain, except from 

children. His third, daughter of the his mother. 
Elector Palatine, was the mother of 



320 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.u. 1098. 

nificance wliicli their country Lad occupied after Charles V. was 
seated on the Imperial throne, were not inclined to see her again 
connected in the same way with the Empire or with France. And 
the other nations of Europe were even qjore interested in prevent- 
ing- the sovereign of either of those countries from obtaining such 
a predominance on the Continent as must arise from the addition 
of the Spanish crown to that which he already wore. But it was 
one thing to procure such renunciations ; another to be able to 
enforce them. Many years before, Louis and Leopold had come 
to an agreement to set aside all such deeds, and, on Charles's 
death, to divide the whole of the Spanish dominions between 
themselves.^ And, if Charles had died while his namesake or 
James had been on the British throne, in all probability this 
arrangement would have been carried out. But there was no 
chance of William standing by and CLuietly looking on while his 
neighbours' power was augmented in so dangerous a degree. And 
Louis was so far humbled by the late war as to recognise the 
necessity of consulting and co-operating with him, and to propose 
that they should take the settlement of the Spanish succession 
into their own hands ; and should compel the assent of the other 
powers to Europe, including the Emperor, to whatever arrange- 
ments they might decide on. Undoubtedly, of his own free choice 
William would not have permitted any augmentation of the 
French territories. Bat he was by no means inclined to plunge 
again into war to prevent it. For, in truth, so greatly had the mis- 
government of his kingdom in the period between the Restora- 
tion and his own accesgion reduced the resources of England, that 
the peace of Ryswick had been little less necessary for him than 
for France. And being unsurpassed for his knowledge of foreign 
politics, and at all times a man of shrewd practical sense as well 
as of diplomatic ability, he was convinced that, after the death of 
Charles, the maintenance of the Spanish empire in its integrity, 
widely scattered as were its different dependencies, would prove 
an impossibility. A partition treaty, therefore, was drawn up by 
him and the French secretary of state, which provided that the 
Prince of Bavaria should become king of Spain, with her Ameri- 
can settlements and the Netherlands; but that he should cede the 
Duchy of Milan to the Archduke Charles, Leopold's second son, to 
whom his father and his elder brother were willing to transfer 
tlieir ow]i claims ; while Naples, Sicily, the islands on the coast 

^ SeeMignet,Success{on(rEspagne, but their meaning was never 

ii. 401 et seq. There are allusions to thoroughly understood before the 

this treaty in the Meiimirs of De publication of this work of M. Mignet, 

Soru, who, as foreign secretary of which is" founded on original docu- 

France, negotiated the first treaty ; ments previously unknown. 



A.D. 1700.] DEATH OF CHAELES OF SPAIN. 321 

of Tuscany, and tlie small frontier province of G uipuiscoa should 
be annexed to the French monarchy. 

But the success of such an arrangement depended in its being 
kept secret till the momerit for acting on it should arrive ; and it 
was not Icept secret. It reached the ears of Charles himself, who, 
though the most imbecile and helpless of human beings, had feel- 
ing enough to resent the act of foreigners in thus taking upon 
themselves to dismember his dominions, without even paying him 
the empty compliment of consulting him on the subject, and 
intelligence enough to feel assured of the support of his Spanish 
subjects in attempting to disconcert it. He instantly drew up a 
will, by which he bequeathed the whole of his dominions to the 
Prince of Bavaria. But, as if fortune ^ had chosen that particular 
moment to baffle the schemes of the rival cabinets, the will had 
hardly been signed, when the prince, to whom it bequeathed this 
rich inheritance, died : and the French and English diplomatists 
had to make a new treaty, and the Spaniard, whom they continued 
to treat as a nonentity, a new will. Louis and William now 
allotted the Spanish monarchy to the Archduke Charles: while 
the Duchy of Milan, which that prince was to have had, was to 
be added to France's share of the spoil. But Charles liked this 
treaty as little as its predecessor ; he was resolved to prevent any 
division whatever of his dominions j and, though he liked the 
House of Bourbon less than that of Austria, he thought Louis so 
much more able to prevent the partition than Leopold, that, on 
making his new will, he left the undivided sovereignty to Philip, 
duke of Anjou, the second son of the Dauphin j to whom his 
elder brother, the Duke of Burgund}^, as heir to the French crown, 
willingly ceded his own pretensions. Pie had scarcely signed it, 
when, in November 1700, he died : and Louis, utterly disregard- 
ing the renunciation which he himself had made on his marriage, 
and the second partition treaty, the ink of which was scarcely dry, 
at once acknowledged Charles's right to dispose of his dominions, 
which was by no means clear, accepted for his grandson the 
splendid legacy which had been thus bequeathed to him, formally 
acknowledged him as King of Spain by the title of Philip V., and 
sent him to the frontier, accompanied by his brother and a splendid 
train of nobles, who only took leave of him when he crossed the 
Pyrenees to make his formal entry into his kingdom. 

Such a violation of his engagements would clearly have justified 

' Fortuna, ssevo lajta regotio, et 

Ludum insolentem liidere peitinax. 

— Ilir. iii 29, thus translated by Drj'den : — 

Fortune, that with malicious joy, ' 
Does man, her slave, oi)pr<.ss. 



322 MODEKN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1702. 

William in declaring war ; and, in fact, when the question of the 
acceptance of the will was discussed in the French council, his 
ablest ministers distinctly warned Louis that such a step would 
inevitably rekindle a general war in Europe. But they were 
mistaken. The English government at the moment was greatly 
weakened by party divisions, caused partly by William's impolitic 
and ostentatious preference of foreigners ; while William himself 
felt that his health, which had always been delicate, was breaking. 
He was unequal to the fatigues of a campaign, even if the nation 
should be inclined to support him in the renewal of war, a dis- 
position which, he could not conceal from himself, it was not 
likely to entertain. He therefore, after a short deliberation, 
recognised Philip: and Louis might have enjoyed peace for the 
remainder of his reign, with all the addition to his renown which 
his success in placing his grandson on so magnificent a throne 
had manifestly given him, if his incurable faithlessness had not 
led him to oflFer William a second insult, which the whole 
English nation looked upon as still more injurious to itself. In 
the autumn of the next year James II. died at St.-Germain ; and 
Louis, disregarding the solemn engagement into which he had 
entered at Ryswick, instantly caused his son to be proclaimed King 
of England under the title of James III. If, as it is probable, the 
acquiescence of the English government in his disregard of the 
Treaty of Partition had led him to suppose that it would be equally 
supine on this occasion, he was speedily undeceived. The bulk ot 
the English people, not at any time in the habit of taking any deep 
interest in foreign politics, cared little whether the French monarch 
gave a sovereign to Spain ; but that he should presume to give 
one to England, and that one whom the nation had already 
formally rejected, was an intolerable act of presumption. Louis 
had done the very last thing that he would have desired to do, 
and what probably nothing else could have done, he had reunited 
the whole English people in support of the king of their choice. 
A new parliament eagerly voted for war. A treaty of alliance with 
the Emperor and Holland was instantly concluded ; and prepara- 
tions for a vigorous prosecution of hostilities by land and sea were 
set on foot, Avhich were in no degree relaxed when, in the spring 
of the next year, William himself died. 

How long and stubbornly contested was the war which ensued ; 
how full of disaster by land and sea to France, and of personal 
humiliation to Louis himself, we need not dilate upon here. The 
triumphs of Marlborough and Peterborough, of Eooke and Howe, 
belong to the history of our own country rather than to the annals 
of France. For above ten years defeat after defeat fell on the 
French armies : no change of generals, no superiority of numbers, 



A.D. 1713.] DEATH OF THE EMPEROE. 323 

could arrest the steady progress of the greatest general who, up to 
that time, had ever wielded the truncheon of command : no gleam 
of success shone upon the French arms, with the exception of 
some advantages on a smaller scale gained by the dukes of Berwick 
and Vendome in Spaia itself, which, though the prize of the con- 
test, was not the field on which the contest was to be decided ; 
till at last the frontier of France itself was no longer inviolable, 
and, for the first time since the days of the League, a foreign 
invader planted his standards on her soil. Accident alone, the 
unforeseen death of Joseph, who, in 1711, when only thirty-two 
years of age, fell a victim to small-pox, gave Louis an appearance 
of having gained some of the objects for which he had engaged in 
the war. As Charles, whom the allies had been labouring to place 
on the throne of Spain, succeeded his brother as Emperor, it became 
evident that the peace of Europe would be more endangered by 
the renewal of the union of the Imperial and Spanish crowns on 
one head, than by the mere relationship of the French and Spanish 
kings. And, under the influence of this feeling, the English 
ministers, who had the principal share in the negotiations of the 
Peace of Utrecht, which closed the war, consented to leave Louis's 
grandson Philip in possession of the principal part of the in- 
heritance which Charles IL had bequeathed to him.^ But though 
the pride of the French nation was thus, in some degree, saved, 
the acquisition of a portion of the old Spanish empire by a French 
prince was but a poor compensation for Blenheim and Ramillies 
and Oudenarde ; for the loss of the frontier fortresses which she 
was compelled to restore to Holland ; and for the settlements in 
North America which she ceded to England. 

Louis was an old man when he signed the Treaty of Utrecht. 
He had been seventy years on the throne. But he still retained 
considerable vigour of constitution and activity of body. He was 
still able to spend hours on horseback in the stag-hunts, which 
had always been among his most favourite pastimes ; and the 
courtiers still proclaimed that the fiim with which he brought 
down the game was as true as ever. Unhappily, he preserved in 
an equal degree the fierce intolerance with which Madame de 
Maintenon and the Jesuits had inspired him, and which was shar- 
pened by a greater impatience than ever of any conduct which 
seemed to disregard his claims to universal deference and obedience. 
Even while the whole attention of the nation was concentrated on 
the war of succession, he could find time and energy for persecu- 



1 Philip obtained Spain and the of Naples, and the Netherlands, to 
American settlements ; but was forced the Emperor, and Sicily to the Duke 
to give up the Milanese, the kingdom of Savoy. 



324 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1713. 

tion. Because Fenelon, archbishop of Cambrai, one of the most 
eminent prelates that had ever adorned the Gallican Church, and 
whom he had himself selected to be the tutor of his most promising 
grandson, the Duke of Burgundy, had defended the intentions, 
though not the language, of a Madame de Guy on, in whom grief for 
the loss of her husband had bred an impulsive devotion which had 
rather unhinged her reason, but whose gentle disposition and effusive 
sentiment had attracted a number of followers, who called them- 
selves the Quietists, he banished Fenelon to his diocese, deprived 
all his relations who had posts about the court of their offices, 
and even compelled the parliament of Dijon to condemn a priest, 
who had advocated some of the Quietist opinions, to the stake ; 
and then, as if excited by his victory over the old archbishop, he 
proceeded to renew his efforts for the suppression of Jansenism, ot 
which he seems to have looked on Q.uietism as a sort of offshoot ; 
though, in fact, there was not the slightest resemblance between 
the doctrines of the two sects, beyond the circumstance that both 
regarded religion as a deep feeling influencing the heart and con- 
duct rather than as an affair of mere ceremonious formality. But 
the alarm of the Jesuits had been revived and increased by the 
reputation and influence which a new Jansenist preacher. Father 
Quesnel, had recently acquired ; and they at last succeeded in 
inducing the Pope to identify himself with their party. Clement 
XI. issued a Bull condemning the five propositions (as they were 
called) of Jansen ; and Louis ordered all the inmates of Port- 
lloyal to sign a document declaring their acceptance of and sub- 
mission to the Bull ; and, on their refusal, commanded the total 
destruction of the convent, rasing the buildings to the ground, 
and even causing their cemetery to be dug up, and the ashes of 
the holy men and women of old, who had been buried there, to 
be scattered to the air. 

It was one of his last acts of tyranny. The last years of his 
life were clouded in an extraordinary degree by domestic calamities. 
His legitimate descendants were very few : of his sons the 
Dauphin alone had grown up to manhood; and besides Philip, 
who, as we have seen, had already become king of Spain, he had 
only two grandsons, the Dukes of Burgundy and Berri. They, how- 
ever, were regarded with general affection throughout the kingdom, 
as princes of virtue, amiable dispositions, and general promise ; 
but in the last years of the reign they were carried off, one after 
the other, with strange and melancholy rapidity. The smallpox 
had for some years raged in Paris with extraordinary virulence, 
and had been especially fatal among the higher classes ; many of 
the nobles, and, among them, some of the ministers, were carried 
off. In 1709 Louis's cousin, the Prince de Conde, died of itj he 



A.D. 1715.] DEATH OF LOUIS XIV. 325 

was followed by his son, the Duke de Bourhon. Within the next 
two years the Dauphin, his eldest son the Duke of Burgundy, and 
that prince's eldest son, the heir of the monarchy, became its 
victims. And in 1714 the Duke of Berri perished more miserably 
than any of his relations, if, as was almost universally believed, 
he was poisoned by his wife, the daughter of his cousin, the Duke 
of Orleans ; a woman whose open defiance of all decency and noto- 
rious infamy of character had caused frequent and open quarrels 
between himself and her, and had led him more than once to 
threaten her with confinement in a convent. 

Louis showed very little feeling for any of these losses. When 
his son died he was seized with a sudden fit of such unseasonable 
economy that he even grudged him a decent funeral, ordering his 
coffin to be conveyed, to St.-Denis in one of his ordinary carriages, 
undistinguished by any mark of mourning. And the death of the 
Duke of Berri he seemed even to regard with satisfaction, in the 
hope that, if the young Duke of Anjou, the sole surviving son of 
the Duke of Burgundy, who was a very sickly infant, should also 
die, he might be able to, secure the succession to the throne for 
the Duke of Maine, his chief favourite among his natural children. 
But if more heartless than ever, he was also growing more super- 
stitious. He began to regard the deaths of those so much younger 
as omens of his own approaching end ; and his fears had a natural 
tendency to realise themselves. In the spring of 1715 those in 
attendance on him began to remark a change in his appearance : 
from that time his strength rapidly decayed ; by the middle of 
August he was known to be dying ; and rarely has the death-bed 
of a sovereign presented a more melancholy or more instructive 
lesson. He had never had the art of making friends ; his palace 
was, indeed, still thronged with courtiers, but no word of respect 
or sympathy for the dying man was heard from their lips, but only 
questions of curiosity as to the possible duration of his life and 
the contents of his .will. His family stood around ; but they too 
thought only of themselves. Even his wife and his son had no 
desire but that he should have strength enough to add a codicil or 
two in their favour, and before his death the lady left him alto- 
o-ether. She had not been pleased at his telling her that the 
greatest comfort which he had in leaving her was the reflection 
that, at her age, she might be expected soon to rejoin him. And 
she apparently resolved to show him that, in her opinion, since 
they were so soon to meet in heaven, they might afford for the 
future to dispense with each other's society on earth. Once he 
sent a messenger to beg her to return to him ; she came for a few 
hours, but again quitted him ; and her cold ingratitude seemed to 
affect him more than his bodily sufferings, severe as they often 



326 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1715. 

■were. Those, however, he bore -with great fortitude and equani- 
mity. 

Nothing; in life 
Became liim like the leaving; it. 

He reproved some of the courtiers whom he saw weeping, or 
pretending to weep, with the question whether they had ever 
regarded him as immortal. He sent for his great-grandson, who, 
though a child only five j'ears old, had now become his heir ; and 
tried, by good advice, to render him sensible of the duties of the 
grand position which was about to devolve on him : warning him 
against following his own example, in fondness for war and for 
magnificent buildings ; and urging him to encourage a reverence 
for religion and virtue among his people. And on the first of Sep- 
tember he died. 

We have seen that Louis was extravagantly overrated, or rather 
flattered, in his own day ; when the city of Paris, by a formal 
vote, conferred on him the title of ' The Great,' and when that 
title was confirmed by the obsequious adulation of poets, annalists, 
orators, and even preachers. We have seen also that the very 
next generation annulled the flattery ; since Voltaire bears witness 
that in the next reign he was no longer spoken of with any such 
additi(m. And Voltaire's contemporaries were in this wiser and 
j uster than their fathers, since certainly there have been very few 
sovereigns not only less entitled to the admiration of posterity, but 
in greater need of its most indulgent construction, if they are to be 
regarded with any feelings save those of detestation and contempt. 
Indeed, before the close of his own reign all the popularity with 
which the successes of his earlier days had invested him had been 
entirely extinguished : and the intelligence of his death was re- 
ceived with undissembled joy by the people in general, who traced 
the terrible distress under which they had long groaned to hia 
inordinate extravagance, "and still more wanton and boundless 
ambition, and who well knew that he had never shown any feel- 
ing for their misery, nor ever made any efibrt to relieve it. It 
may be admitted that he was endowed by nature with fair 
abilities ; that he gradually improved them in some points by an 
industrious attention to the details of business, of which his 
grandfather Henry had indeed set him the example, but which, 
nevertheless, sovereigns had not usually practised ; and that the 
fruit of this diligence was beneficially seen in the sanction and 
support which he gave to the measures, by which his difierent 
mfciisters, and especially Colbert, sought to develop and augment 
the resources of the country, to facilitate the internal communica- 
tion between diff"erent provinces, and to encourage domestic trade 
and foreign commerce. Nor has it ever been questioned that he 



A.D. 171.5.] CHAEACTER OF LOUIS. 327 

excelled in grace and dignity of manner, in that art of dealing 
with others which is called tact, and in that sort of kingly elo- 
quence which is displayed in neat and appropriate speeches. But 
of any more substantial good qualities he was utterly destitute. 
The obligations of honour and good faith he systematically re- 
pudiated.' To his most faithful servants and ministers he was 
capricious and ungrateful. As a persecutor of those of his sub- 
jects who differed from him in religion he was as inhuman as his 
predecessor Francis or as Philip of Spain ; while, for any parallel 
to the deliberate ferocity with which he ordered the devastation 
of the countries with which he was at war, we must go back 
to the exploits of the half-civilised Attila or Genseric. Though 
continually forcing his neighbours into war by the most unpro- 
voked aggressions, he was himself so far from being animated 
with the spirit of chivalrous enterprise that he was devoid even 
of that animal courage which is an especial attribute of his country- 
men in general. In his private life he was profligate and licentious, 
beyond even the foulest traditions of his ancestors. Nor can it 
be said that his vices were degrading only to himself. They had 
the most fatal influence on the nation at large, accelerating the 
demoralisation of all classes which had indeed been long at work, but 
which had never proceeded with such giant strides as during this 
reign ; when, as one keen observer remarks,^ it began to affect the 
language itself, and the very term which hitherto had implied 
virtuous integrity * came to mean nothing better than an unpol- 
ished unsuspicious fool. 

The military triumphs, which at the time of the Treaty of 
Nimeguen won the admiration of the Parisians, were more than 
effaced by the long train of defeats which his armies sustained 
from Marlborough and Eugene in the "War of the Succession ; 
a war which, as we have seen, was brought on by his deliberate 
and shameless violation of his most recent engagements. But 
one glory which distinguished his reign cannot be taken from it, 
and it is that which makes his age a conspicuous and honorable 
landmark in the history of the nation. It was the period in 
which France founded and established her claim to that eminence 
in literatm'e and science for which she has ever since been so 
honorably distinguished. According to Voltaire, it was now that 
for the first time the language became settled,* through the 

' In a long paper of instructions are drawn. — Memnires historiqties. 
■which, in his advanced years, he drew ^ Ji^ssai sur V Etahlissetnent mo- 

up for the instruction of his grand- narchique de Louis XIV, p. 174. 

son, as his heir, he speaks of treaties (Leraontez). 
as only meant to be broken, and to •'* ' Honnete homme.' 
be observed the less in exact propor- ■* Siede de Louis XIV, c. 32, 37. 
vion to the strictness in which they 



828 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1715. 

purity of style and delicacy of taste wliich were displayed by 
Pascal; and which, as forming a standard by which to measure 
all subsequent compositions, make the Provincial Letters more 
memorable than even the exuberance of their wit, the keenness of 
their logic, or the loftiness of the feeling which animates them. 
And Pascal had hardly closed his career when writers of every 
class arose, by the variety of their labours, to give a further 
development to the powers and a further exhibition of the riches 
of the language. Corneille, indeed, had laid the foundation of 
his fame by the Cid in the previous reign ; but Racine, who be- 
longs wholly to this age, at least equalled him in poetical genius, 
and in the general opinion of his countrymen, surpassed him in 
the delineation of the passions to which tragedy owes its power : 
as a comic dramatist, Moliere has perhaps no superior in any 
country, except ourown Shakspeare : as, in somewhat kindred 
classes of composition, Le Sage stands high in the first class of 
novelists, and Boileau is still the keenest of modern satirists. 
No great historian as yet came forward ;, but we shall look in vain 
in any other country or in any other period of French literature for 
Memoir writers, whose works are adorned with wit, animation, 
and even candour and honesty, equal to those which attract and 
fascinate the reader in the works of Madame de Motteville, 
Madame de Montpensier, de Eetz, and St.-Simon. While the 
name of Madame de Sevigne has become almost proverbial for 
that combination of tenderness of feeling, correctness of judgment, 
sprightliness of wit, and liveliness of description, with which she 
almost daily transmitted to her distant friends alike the news of 
the whims, the changing fashions and intrigues of the court, and 
of the weigli"tier transactions which affected the ministry and the 
kingdom. Of late years France can boast of but few distingui- 
shed students of the ancient languages ; but the reign of which we 
are speaking produced Mabillon, Montfaucon, Rollin, and Madame 
Uacier, who maintain even in our own day a just claim to the 
attention and gratitude of classical scholars. While, in the less 
flowery but more fruitful paths of science, Pascal, pre-eminent 
as a mathematician, before he attained his wider fame as a contro- 
versialist J Malebranche, the first French metaphysician ; de L'Isle 
the first scientific geographer ; Vauban still the most celebrated 
of military engineers ; and Riquet, whose great canal of Langue- 
doc, of which he was both the projector and the constructor, is 
unapproached by any similar work in Europe, all belong entirely 
to this age. It must be added, that most of these great men were 
stimulated to the highest exertion of their genius by the j udicious 
encouragement of royal favour which, if originally stimulated and 
.set in acti'>n by Colbert, was, after his death, still steadily dis- 



A.D. 1715.] 



CHAKACTER OF THE AGE. 



329 



played towards all worthy objects by the king's spontaneous 
munificence. We may not, indeed, allow that Louis was, in anj'^ 
sense of the word, a great king ; but it certainly cannot be denied 
that his reign, the longest that has ever been granted to any 
monarch, was a great age.^ 



1 The authorities for the preceding 
chapter, besides the regular Histories 
of France, are Voltaire's Steele de 
Louis XIV, the Memoires of St.- 



Simon, Villars, Berwick, Prince 
Eugene, the Lettres of Madame de 
Se'vign^, and Stephen's Lecture 
xxiii. 






330 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1682. 



CHAPTER XV. 
A.D. 1682—1725. 

IN a former chapter it has been mentioned that, shortly after the 
Duke of Lorraine's victory of Mohacz, a Russian army invaded 
the Crimea, and that, ten years later, Russia became a party to 
the peace of Carlowitz. Though her influence on the arrange- 
ments then concluded vras small, her accession to the treaty has an 
importance of its own, since it marks the introduction among the 
nations of Christendom of a people destined from that time forth 
to play a considerable, sometimes even a leading part in the 
affairs of Europe and of the vt^orld ; and its rise and power are so 
wholly the work of one extraordinary man, that a few pages may 
be well employed in the endeavour to give some idea of his prin- 
cipal actions and of his character. Not, indeed, that his country 
had not been previously in some degree known to the Western 
nations. As early as the reign of Henry VIII. an attempt to dis- 
cover a northern passage to India had led an English ship to 
Archangel, from which some hardy explorers had penetrated to 
Moscow. And, in the next generation, the Czar of Muscovy, for 
such was then the name of the country and the title of its sove- 
reign, sent embassies successively to Mary and Elizabeth : the 
first to establish a trade with a kingdom which had already a 
reputation for wealth and enterprise, the second to beg for an 
English wife. Both queens cordially entered into the first object: 
and Elizabeth would willingly have aidfed the Czar to obtain his 
second wish ; but so destitute of all humane civilisation was the 
Muscovite nation understood to be, that no English lady could be 
found to listen to his suit, though a crown was to be the price ot 
her compliance. 

But, in the middle of the next century, the throne devolved on a 
prince named Alexis, who, though insensible or indifferent to the 
want of civilisation which prevailed among his subjects, had a 
warlike spirit which prompted him to desire to extend his own 
power. He ventured to d efy the Turks, though they had wrested 
more than one town and province from his neighbour, the King of 
Poland; and he even planned the formation of a league with the 



&.D. 1682.] ACCESSION OF PETER THE GREAT. 331 

Pope and those sovereigns whom the Court of Rome could chiefly 
influence, which should have for its object the stripping the Sultan 
of all his recent conquests in Europe. But an early death pre- 
vented him from carrying out his designs : his eldest son and 
successor, Feodor, died after a reign too brief to allow him to 
form any projects of conquest ; his second son, Ivan, was imbecile 
from his birth ; and his -third son, Peter, the child of a second 
marriage, to whom, in consequence of Ivan's incapacity, Feodor 
bequeathed his dominions, was, at his accession, only ten years of 
age. So young a child was at first, of course, a sovereign only in 
name. And it was not without a sharp struggle and a display of 
decision and resolution very rare in a youth that he eventually 
established himself in real authority. Ivan had a sister, Sophia, a 
woman of great ambition and of no inconsiderable talent, who 
conceived the idea of profiting by Peter's tender age to make her- 
self mistress of the government. By liberal gifts and promises, she 
gained over the Strelitzes, an unruly and ferocious brigade, who, 
however, were the only organised force of the Empire ; and, claim- 
ing to exercise the supreme authority in. the name of Ivan, who, 
as she represented the matter, had been imjustly and causelessly 
passed over, she stimulated them to an insurrection, in which all 
the maternal relations of the young Peter were cruelly massacred ; 
and at the end of which she herself was formally proclaimed by 
them regent of the Empire. As such she reigned with absolute 
power for seven years. But, as Peter grew up, she began to per- 
ceive that he would not long acquiesce in being thus superseded ; 
and the steps which she took to secure herself in her usurpation 
ruined her. When he had reached the age of seventeen, she 
engaged a division of the Strelitzes to seize him, undoubtedly with 
the intention that his death should follow his arrest. But her 
plot was betraj^ed to the young Czar, who turned her design 
against herself. He took refuge in a convent : called the chief 
boyards or nobles of the land around him, and gained over the 
principal officers of the Strelitzes themselves. Sophia was an-ested, 
with her chief advisers and partisans : they were executed, she was 
sent to a convent ; and from June 1689 we may date the real begin- 
ning of a reign as glorious to the sovereign and as beneficial to the 
subject as any recorded in history. 

Even the exultation natural to one who thus suddenly found 
himself emancipated from control, and possessed of unlimited 
authority, did not dazzle Peter's sober practical intellect. Pie had 
already formed a high and just estimate of the duties of such a 
position as he had attained, and of the qualifications necessary for 
their performance ; and, what is rarer still, he had taken a correct 
measure of the defjree in which he himself was deficient in those 



332 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1682. 

qualifications. Sophia had purposely neglected his education, and . 
had even done her best to corrupt his mind by encouraging him in 
habits of self-indulgence ; so that he was as yet ignorant of every- 
thing beyond the merest rudiments of Imowledge. But he was 
aware and ashamed of his ignorance. He was equally aware, and 
equally ashamed, of the degraded condition of his people, who, in 
the greater part of his wide dominions, were in a state of semi-bar- 
barism, and who were noAvhere far elevated above it. And he was 
resolved to remove this stigma from them and from himself. He 
was ambitious with an honoi-able ambition : with the desire of 
ruling over a civilised and improving people, instead of over a 
horde of debased barbarians contented in their debasement. And 
he felt that the education which he desired to spread must begin 
at home : that he must instruct himself first, and lead his subjects 
to appreciate and desire instruction by the contemplation of his 
own example. History furnishes many other instances of self- 
educated men ; but not one of a man who set about to educate 
himself with a nobler object. 

The nations of western Europe of which he as yet knew most 
were the Germans and the Dutch. On a portion of his frontier 
the Germans were his neighbours, and many of their manufactures 
had found their way into the Muscovite towns. Dutch vessels had 
for some time carried on a traffic in the Baltic'^ and his own father 
had induced some shipbuilders of Amsterdam to build him some 
small sailing-boats suited for the navigation of the Volga. But 
Peter was resolved to have manufactories, dockyards, and work- 
men of his own ; and with that view he applied himself, in the first 
instance, to learn the languages of those two countries, with the 
intention of visiting them when he should have enabled himself to 
communicate with the inhabitants, and when he should have 
established his power at home on so secure a foundation that it 
should not be liable to be overthrown in his absence. For nothing 
in him was more remarkable than the patience (so difierent from 
the usual impetuosity alike of ignorance and of despotic power) 
with which he allowed sufficient time for his difierent under- 
takings. It was indispensable that, before he quitted his kingdom, 
though for ever so short a time, he should organise a force capable 
of curbing the Strelitzes ; and he proceeded to raise two regiments, 
one commanded by General Gordon, a Scotch officer, and composed 
wholly of foreigners, and in great part of Protestant refugees, 
whom the revocation of the Edict of Nantes had driven from 
France ; the other of native Muscovites, with veteran soldiers for 
the commanders, and a number of young nobles for subalterns ; in 
which, to inculcate discipline and subordination on every class of 
his subjects, he himself served for a few weeks as a drummer-boy^ 



A.D. 1682.] THE CAPTURE OF AZOV. 333 

then as a private soldier, and was successi%'elj promoted to a ser- 
geant's lialbert, and to a lieutenant's commission ; and it was not 
less characteristic of his temper, both in its severity and its disdain 
of everything unreal, that he disciplined his recruits for war, not 
by peaceful parades, reviews and sham fights, hut by actual con- 
flict, in which the different divisions fired upon and charged one 
another, so that new levies were required to fill up the chasms in 
the ranks caused by this unexampled system of training. But 
even more than to the task of raising an efficient army was his 
attention directed to becoming the master of a powerful fleet. It 
was a fancy adopted in spite of the greatest natural obstacles ; for 
his only coast was that which was washed by the Arctic Ocean, 
and icebound for the greater part of the year. The provinces 
which fringed the Baltic belonged to Sweden ; and though the 
Don, which ran through his territory, did fall into the Sea of Azov, 
yet Azov itself, the town at the mouth of that great river, belonged 
to the Sultan. But one prominent feature of his character was 
indomitable obstinacy. Forming his designs with great delibera- 
tion, he never relinquished them nor allowed any difficulties to 
damp his zeal for their accomplishment. And thus, throughout 
his life, nothing could change his resolution to make the Muscovites 
a maritime people, though not even in Archangel, his only port, 
was there a single Muscovite vessel. And he even delayed his 
project of foreign travel, in order to lay the foundations of his naval 
power. He attacked Azov, in the hope of thus obtaining an 
entrance to the Mediterranean. It was gallantly defended by its 
governor, Jacob, a native of Dantzic, who, for some quarrel with 
his superior officers, had renounced his country and his religion, 
and, becoming a Mussulman, had obtained promotion in the Turkish 
army. Peter was beaten off, and forced to raise the siege. He 
returned the next year, bringing with him a reinforcement of 
engineers and artillerymen, whom he had obtained from the Em- 
peror and the Elector of Brandenburgh ; and, at the same time 
sending a flotilla of boats down the river, which, to his great 
delight, defeated a small Turkish squadron, and captured some 
of the Turkish caiques. 

Cut off from its supplies by this success Azov fell : and Peter 
having now, as he flattered himself, secured a place which labour 
and skill might form into a sufficient harbour for large ships, 
and which had a direct communication with the Mediterranean, 
delayed no longer to carry out the remainder of his plans, by 
visiting the countries where naval architecture was brought to the 
highest perfection, and maritime science was best understood, 
that he might learn everything that related to ships and sailors 
himself, and so be able to superintend the preparation of a fleet, 



334 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1697. 

and the organization, and equipment of the crews witli the pre- 
cision of practical and personal knowledge. 

At the same time, while thus fixing his own mind on nothing 
Lut what was real and substantial, he could see that show and pomp 
were necessary to produce an impression on the multitude ; and 
to inspire the people in general with a martial ardour, and to 
excite them to look forward to his return as the harbinger of 
fresh victories, he resolved, after the fashion of the ancient 
Romans, to celebrate his return to Moscow, by a triumph for the 
conquest of Azov. He entered the city in a magnificent proces- 
sion, the crews of the flotilla which had captured the galleys lead- 
ing the way, the soldiers who had invested the city following ; the 
prisoners bringing up the rear, while, to complete the resemblance 
of the ceremony to the scenes which the Capitol had witnessed in 
ancient times, Jacob, the governor, to whom as a deserter from 
his prince's service, and a renegade from his faith, he refused 
to allow the rights of honorable warfare, was, at the end of the 
ceremony, removed from the car in which he had been conveyed, 
and hung in the sight of his fellow prisoners. And even this 
pageant, the ever-vigilant Czar, made at the same time a vehicle 
for inculcating the principle of due subordination. He did not take 
the post of honour to himself. In a military procession he was 
still but a lieutenant; and while the generals rode proudly 
through the streets on splendidly caparisoned chargers ; he 
marched in their train among the subalterns, noticeable for nothing 
but the strange humility, which made the lord of all exchange 
his royal dignity for his military rank. 

Having made careful and judicious arrangements for the tran- 
quillity of his dominions, the repression of any attempt at insur- 
rection, and the orderly conduct of the administration during his 
absence, in the summer of 1697 he quitted his capital for 
Amsterdam ; travelling incognito, not as piinces usually under- 
stand the word when they relieve their hosts and themselves of 
some of the burdens of etiquette by the assumption of some title 
of inferior nobility, which is recognised just as often as con- 
venience dictates ; but taking on him not only the name, but the 
habits and toils of a common artizan. He called himself Pierre 
Michaeloff ; and establishing himself in a cottage at Sardam, where 
was the principal Dutch dockyard, he worked as hard as any 
earner of ordinary wages, in the blacksmith's forge, in the saw- 
mills, in the rope walk, till he could make every part of a ship, 
hull, masts, sails, and cordage with his own hands. His fellow 
workmen, to whom his rank was no secret, though they only 
called him Peterhas or Master Peter, were delighted at the 
honour done to their craft, and to themselves, for he lived among 



A.D. 1G98.] HE VISITS ENGLAND. 335 

them on a footing of perfect equality ; but some ambassadors wlio 
came from this country were less delighted when, on seeking an 
interview with him, they found that he insisted on receiving them 
at the mast-head of a vessel to which he was putting the finishing 
touches. 

From Holland, at the beginning of the next year, he crossed 
over to England ; having already made the acquaintance of the 
king himself during the negotiations which had preceded the 
Treaty of Ryswick : William, who never lost an opportunity of 
forming foreign alliances, receiving him with as much honour as 
was consistent with the concealment of his rank, though he did 
not come to this country as an artisan, but as a private gentleman 
travelling for information. A royal yacht, escorted by two men- 
of-war, was sent to Ilelvoetsluys for his conveyance, and Say's 
Court, the residence of the celebrated Evelyn, was fixed for his 
use, because it joined Deptford Dockyard ; for the study of mari- 
time matters was still his darling object, though his chief atten- 
tion was now directed to the management of vessels rather than 
to their construction, and day after day he might be seen in com- 
pany with the surveyor of the navy. Sir Anthony Deane, sailing a 
small yacht in the Thames, or rowing a wherry with his own 
hands. He was greatly delighted when William made him a 
present of a man-of-war, which he learnt how to steer. And when 
for his amusement, a naval sham-fight between two squadrons of 
six sail of the line was exhibited at Spithead, his admiration of 
what he saw was so great that he told Admiral Mitchell, who had 
been the commander-in-chief, that he looked upon a British 
admiral as one with whom a Czar of Muscovy might gladly ex- 
change conditions. The sailors were naturally flattered by his 
esteem of their profession, and repaid it by an enthusiastic wel- 
come whenever he appeared amongst them ; but with other 
classes he was less popular. Quakers he pronounced useless 
citizens of any country, since they would not bear arms ; lawyers 
he regarded with still greater disfavour, marvelling at the number 
whom he saw in Westminster Hall, and declaring that there were 
but two in all Ilussia, and that he thought of hanging one of 
them on his return ; and they repaid his disapproval with ridicule 
of his uncouth manners, and gluttony : while Bishop Burnet dis- 
paraged his abilities because he seemed indifferent to religion, or 
at least to controversy. His landlord liked him least of all, for 
Evelyn was nice about his furniture, and especially proud of his 
garden, which had no equal in England, but Peter tore up his 
trim alleys, broke through his holly hedges ; and the habits of 
himself and of all his suite were, as Evelyn's servants reported 
to him, so *' right nasty,' that the destruction they wrought in the 



336 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1682. 

house was worse than their devastation of the gi'ounds. And, 
after their departure, the treasury was put to a considerable ex- 
pense to repair the damage inflicted on the whole property by the 
unseemly foulness of its^royal occupant. 

By magnificent offers, which, however, it is said, were so little 
fulfilled, that those who had relied on them found afterwards that 
they could neither obtain their pay, nor permission to leave the 
country, he induced a number of Englishmen to return with him 
to Kussia ; chiefly selecting those who were skilled in different 
branches of the sailoi-s' or shipbuilders' arts, but not neglecting 
practitioners of other useful arts, especially mechanics and surgery, 
both of which he himself had studied with some success, so as to 
become a proficient in bleeding and tooth-drawing, which, after 
his return, he occasionally practised, to the annoyance of those 
whom he compelled to be his patients. From England, he had 
proposed to cross over to France ; but Louis, for some reason 
which is not easy to be explained, excused himself from receiving 
him ; ' Leopold, on the other hand, entertained him with splendid 
hospitality at Vienna ; and the Pope expressed great eagerness 
that he should visit him at Rome ; hoping thus to efifect an union 
between the Greek and the Romish Churches. But while he was 
still in the Austrian capital, intelligence reached him which com- 
pelled him to hasten back to Moscow. 

His subjects were so far from sharing his admiration for the 
civilisation of foreign countries, that the Strelitzes looked upon it 
as an insult ; while the priests regarded the mere act of travelling 
in them as a crime. Of this superstitious illiberality, the parti- 
sans of Sophia, who had become more numerous during her 
brother's absence, took advantage. Peter had requited the favours 
of William and his ministers by relaxing the ancient prohibition 
against the importation of tobacco, which was already a profitable 
branch of British trade, but which the Muscovite clergy pro- 
denounced to be condemned by our Lord himself, as that which 
filed a man by coming out of his mouth. Such a dispensation 
with the precepts of their religion in one point seemed to their 
narrow superstition an indication of hostility to the religion itself : 
and politicians, priests, and Strelitzes rose in revolt to depose the 
dangerous reformer, and to replace Sophia on the throne. Peter 
had reason to hasten his return home; but before he reached 
Moscow, General Gordon had already quelled the insurrection, 
and the Czar had only to chastise the guilty, which he did with 
the most merciless severity. Many were broken on the wheel ; 
some, even women, who had been privy to the treason, were 

1 St.-Simon, p. 101, ed. 1829. 



A.D. 1699.] SUPPEESSION OF THE STEELITZES. 33/ 

buried alive. Sopbia berself was punished by the erection of a 
gallows in front of her own windows, on which many of her 
friends suffered : and it was not till two thousand had been put to 
death that his fury abated, and he consented to pardon the rest, 
drafting them into different regiments, and abolishing the very 
name of Strelitz. 

It may be that he was not in his heart sorry for the opportunity 
which had thus been afforded him of teaching all his subjects the 
danger of resistance to his will ; for he had never disguised from 
himself the reluctance with which they would accept his reforms, 
and reforms of all kinds he was resolved to introduce. But, after 
so terrible an example of severity, he had no fear of meeting any 
further opposition ; and he now proceeded with great rapidity in 
the work which he had proposed to himself. The principal prelates 
had constantly arrogated to themselves privileges inconsistent with 
the imperial authority, and which at times had even been proved 
to be dangerous to it. He now compelled the whole body of the 
clergy to acknowledge his supremacy, not only as sovereign of the 
state, but as head of the Church, by an oath which Voltaire cha- 
racterises as even more stringent than that which vested the same 
power in the king of England. The whole population had hitherto 
worn long garments trailing to the ground, with huge loose 
breeches, which were a hindrance to vigorous exertion or rapidity 
of movement, and long unsightly beards, to all of which they clung, 
as marking the difference between themselves and other nations. 
But, as he was determined to extinguish that difference, he wisely 
concluded that the first step was to efface the signs of it, and issued 
an edict commanding all men to adopt the dress of western Europe 
and to shave their chins ; though so deeply-rooted were their old 
barbarian prejudices in the minds of the people that several years 
elapsed before general obedience was paid to this part of the edict, 
even in spite of a heavy tax which was imposed on all who neg- 
lected compliance. But even those most bigoted to these old 
fashions could not long shut their eyes to the beneficial effects 
which began to flow from his other measures. Schools were 
founded in all the chief towns of the Empire. Hospitals were 
established and provided with able physicians. Printing-presses 
were erected and set to work, and scholars were employed to 
translate into Russian the most celebrated and useful works which 
existed in other languages. He even condescended to interest 
himself in matters which no legislator had ever before thought 
worthy of his attention : encouraging his nobles to give parties and 
balls, in order to promote social intercourse and politeness of 
manners, and exciting the ladies to vie with one another in the 
adoption of French fashions of dress. Nothing seemed to liim 



338 ■ MODEEN HISTORY. Ta.d. 16&9. 

beneath his notine -which could tend in any way to refine the 
manners of his people. And perhaps one measure which he 
adopted to implant in them a feeling of self-respect, which he 
wisely judged to be indispensable to making others respect them, 
though apparently trifling, argues as wise a magnanimity as any 
other. His predecessors had required all who approached them to 
speak of themselves as slaves of the throne ; he abolished the usage, 
and substituted the title of subjects, hoping that the western ele- 
vation of feeling and refinement of sentiment would be gradually 
implanted in their hearts by their use of the same style by which 
a Frenchman described his relation to the monarch on whom he 
had conferred the title of ' the Great,' or the Briton his towards the 
prince whom his own vote had contributed to place on the throne. 

And with care equal to if not greater than that which he 
bestowed on other objects did he labour on the formation and 
organisation of his arniy : which, indeed, was indispensable to his 
acquisition of a powerful fleet, since it was only by conquest that 
he could acquire maritime provinces and harbours. During his 
visit to Vienna he had paid particular attention to the system 
adopted in the Austrian army, which the recent achievements of 
the Duke of Lorraine and Prince Eugene had caused to be 
regarded as equal even to the French. In every province regi- 
ments were raised and drilled after the Austrian method ; while 
the Czar himself traversed his kingdom to and fro with unwearied 
diligence ; stimulating the commanders everywhere to carry out 
his orders by the vigilance of his personal inspection ; but, with 
judicious forbearance, abstaining from any interference with 
their authority, and speaking of himself as a subaltern whose 
hopes of promotion depended, like the prospects of any other 
soldier, on the distinction which he might obtain by his good 
conduct, and on the approbation of his superiors. 

By the end of the century he had collected a force but little 
short of 100,000 men ; one which no potentate in Europe could at 
that time outnumber. And he was eager to test their prowess 
by measuring them against a foreign enemy. A monarch who 
has this ambition can easily find an object of attack ; and just 
at this moment circumstances seemed to invite him to a war 
which, while, if successful, it would give him the sea coast which, 
above all acquisitions, he coveted, would also wear the appearance 
5f being undertaken not in a spirit of wanton aggression, but for 
the legitimate purpose of recovering territories which had been 
wrested from Muscovy, and its allies, by conquerors of former 
generations. The most powerful of the Northern nations was 
Sweden ; whose kings, ever since the time of the great Gustavus, 
had been constantly extending their dominions on the southern 



A.D. 1700.] ACCESSION OF CHAELES XII. 339 

side of the Baltic ; till they had gradually become masters of tlie 
whole of the Baltic coast. Charles X.T., the third in succes- 
sion from Gustavus, had beeen especially successful, conquering 
and annexing all the maritime provinces which lay between the 
acquisitions of Gustavus and Finland ; and earning for himself so 
widespread and honorable a renown that William and Louis had 
agreed to accept him as the umpire by whose impartial arbitration 
they should terminate their long and sanguinary quarrel. But, in 
the midst of the negotiations at Ryswick, he died : his son, who 
succeeded him on the throne, was a boy only fifteen years of 
age; and it was not strange that those who envied or feared 
Sweden should see in his youth an opportunity for reducing his 
power. The greater part of the Swedish acquisitions had been 
made at the expense of Poland ; and the conduct of the Swedish 
monarchs had not been such as to dispose the inhabitants 
of the conquered provinces to acquiesce in their yoke. On 
the contrary, they had ostentatiously trampled on the ancient 
privileges of the people : and when, a few years before the death 
of Charles XI., Patkul, a noble of Livonia, was sent, with six 
other deputies, from Biga to Stockholm, to remonstrate against • 
the treatment to which his countrymen were exposed, the only 
answer which he received was the imprisonment of his colleagues, 
and a sentence of death against himself. He escaped before it 
could be executed; and, having now injuries of his own, as well 
as of his native land, to revenge, bided his time till he could find 
an opportunity to make the common oppressor repent of his 
tyranny. 

A year or two before the death of Charles XL, Augustus the 
Elector of Saxony had been elected King of Poland ; and to his 
court Patkul now repaired, to point out to him how easy the 
youth and inexperience of Charles XIL must render the task of 
recovering Livonia. Peter, on his return from Vienna, had already 
had an interview with Augustus, in which the same project had 
been discussed. A formal treaty of alliance between the two 
princes was speedily concluded, and strengthened by the accession 
of the King of Denmark ; and in the spring of the year 1700 the 
confederate sovereigns declared wiir against Sweden, and began a 
campaign which they flattered themselves would be short and 
triumphant, by attacking Charles at three points at once. The 
Danes overran Holstein, whose duke was married to Charles's 
sister ; Augustus laid siege to Eiga ; and Peter, with an army of 
60,000 or 70,000 men, invested Narva, a town of the small pro- 
vince of Ingria, which had a peculiar value in his eyes from the 
excellence of its harbour. 

They might have been pardoned for thinking their combination 



340 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1700. 

irresistible, for the whole force at Charles's disposal did not 
exceed 30,000 men ; an inferiority in numbers for which the ex- 
perience of the most skilful veteran could not have been expected to 
compensate. But there was nothing boyish about Charles, except 
his years. In many respects he was not unlike Peter himself. He 
resembled him even in the difficulties which at first opposed 
themselves to the exercise of his lawful authority ; for, as Sophia 
had tried to usurp the power which belonged to the Czar, so 
the dowager queen, Edvige Eleanor, to whom the regency of 
Sweden had been bequeathed by Charles XL, was eager to pro- 
long her period of rule ; and it was not without a struggle that 
she was at last compelled to resign it. Charles resembled Peter, 
too, in some features of his disposition. Young as he was, he had 
a resolute unswerving will, irrepressible energy, and dauntless 
courage. He was equally full of ambition ; but the glory which 
he coveted was not that of a reformer and legislator, but that of a 
conqueror. Alexander the Great was the hero whom he took for 
his model, declaring, while still a child, that though the Mace- 
donian had died at the age of thirty-two, he had lived long 
enough since he had conquered kingdoms. And it was not per- 
haps without a secret satisfaction that he now found himself in a 
position which called upon him to emulate his prowess by con- 
tending against overpowering odds. He declared to his council 
that, while he would never have begun an unjust war, he was 
resolved never to terminate a just one, but by the desti-uction of 
all his enemies. And, undismayed by the confederacy which had 
been formed against him, he took his measures to encounter it 
with as great calmness as if he had long been habituated to con- 
front danger, and as thorough a skill as if he had been accustomed 
to command armies and to plan campaigns. He proposed to 
relieve Holstein by attacking Copenhagen itself: a design which 
his most trusted adviser, General Renschild, pronounced worthy of 
the most matured judgment of the great Gustavus ; and carried 
out his descent on Zealand, with such vigour, that Frederic IV., 
to save his capital, was compelled to solicit peace on condition of 
desisting from hostilities against Holstein, and of reimbursing its 
duke all the expense to which he had been put. Augustus was 
forced to raise the siege of Riga ; and, at the end of three months, 
Charles had no enemy left to contend with, but the Czar. 

Peter, however, was sufficiently formidable by himself. As has 
been already said, he had sixty or seventy thousand men under 
the walls of Narva ; the fortifications of which were so weak and 
ill- constructed, and the garrison so inadequate, that it seemed 
inconceivable how the governor, count Hooru, had been able to 
maintain the defence for a single week. And for Charles, with 



A.D. 1700.] THE SIEGE OE NAEVA. 341 

20,000 men, wlilcli was all that lie could spare, to undertake to 
compel an army so superior in numbers to raise the siege seemed 
an enterprise of insane rashness.' Yet he not only undertook it, 
but succeeded. He was aware that the difference between the two 
armies was in reality far less than it appeared to be. The Swedes 
had never forgotten the tactics which they had learned from the 
great warrior who had won the victories of Leipsic and Lutzen ; and 
Charles's force, though small, had no superior in Europe for disci- 
pline and steadiness; while a great portion of the Muscovite host 
was little better than a rabble. Many of the soldiers had bows 
and arrows, instead of muskets. Not a few had neither swords 
nor pikes ; but wielded heavy clubs, as their only weapons of 
offence ; and though the different batteries numbered 150 cannons, 
the whole army could not furnish one trained artilleryman. The 
only troops really worthy of the name of soldiers were a battalion of 
12,000 French refugees, which an oificer, named Le Fort, whom 
the Czar had long distinguished with peculiar confidence, had levied 
and trained ; and a brigade of 18,000 men, into which the sur- 
vivors of the old Strelitz regiment had been drafted. The dis- 
parity, therefore, between the two armies was not really so great 
as at first sight it appeared to be : though had the whole Musco- 
vite host been equal to Le Fort's brigade, it would not have 
affected Charles's resolution to attack it ! The operations against 
Copenhagen were the first. occasion on which he had been under 
fire ; and, as he heard the musket balls whistle around him, he 
had declared that theirs for the future should be his only music : 
his victory over the Danes had naturally increased his confidence ; 
and, in a military point of view, the preservation of Narva was an 
object for which it was worth while to run some risk. Peter had 
already been six weeks in front of it when, on the fifteenth of 
November, Charles landed in the Gulf of Riga with 16,000 
infantry, and about 4,000 cavalry. And, as he had no reason to 
suppose that Iloorn, with all his resolutiop, and all his skill, could 
be able to hold out much longer, he at once pressed on his march 

' Voltaire himself, to whose la- estimated the number who fell in the 

horious accuracy Mr. Barrow bears action at about 6,000, besides a great 

cordial testimonj', admits that there number who were drowned, and those 

is great uncertainty as to the strength who escaped and rejoined him at 

of the Russian army at the battle of Novgorod at nearly 23,000 ; while it 

Narva. Some documents which had seems certain that Charles believed 

been sent to him, as he says, reduced his prisoners to be nearly four times 

the number to 60,000, and some even as numerous as his own entire force, 

to 40,000. But he adds, that all General Gordon's estimate of 34,000, 

contemporary narratives fix it at as the entire strength of the Russians 

100,000. I have stated the strength on the daj- of battle, seems quite in- 

of the besieging arm}"- at from 60,000 admissible. 
lo 70,000, because Peter himself 



342 MODERN HISTOKY. [a.d. 1700. 

towards Narva with extraordinary celerity. He himself was 
with his advanced guard, of 9,000 men ; and that division, urged 
on hy his impetuosity, so outstripped the rest of the army, that it 
was utterly unsupported when, after a fortnight's march, he found 
himself in front of the besieger's outposts. Without a moment's 
deltiy, he attacked them ; and his haste of itself contributed to his 
victory. Some of his officers did remonstrate against the audacity 
of launching a single division, almost destitute of artillery, against 
a whole army whose front bristled with 150 guns ; and their ap- 
prehensions might have communicated themselves to the main 
body if time had been allowed for them to spread. But neither 
had the Swedes leisure to think of their danger, nor the enemy to 
perceive by how small a force they were assaulted ; the front line 
of the Russians fled without striking a blow ; the second line was 
uncovered and thrown into confusion by their flight; and fell 
back in almost equal disorder on the third line ; and soon the three 
lines, in one disorganised mass, were forced back on the camp, 
which the Czar had protected with some slight entrenchments, to 
protect the main body against the sallies of the garrison : but which 
was not large enough to allow space for the movements of so large 
a force as was now crowded within it. Charles, as he pressed on 
to the attack of the main body with greater vigour than ever, 
pointed out to his officers that the Russian superiority in numbers 
would now prove a weakness to them ; and he had advantages, 
also, of which he was not aware. Peter himself was not with 
his army; regarding the immediate fail of the town as inevitable, 
he had gone down to some of the inland, provinces, to bring up 
fresh levies which should enable him to extend his conquests, and 
the officers whom he had left in command were jealous of each 
other : the Duke de Croi, a Fleming by birth, was the commander- 
in-chief ; and, as a foreigner, the Russian princes refused to obey 
him ; while the French and German officers showed a still greater 
disdain for their Russian colleagues ; and could by no means be 
brought to act in concert with them. It was mid-day on the 
thirtieth of November when Charles came in sight of the Russian 
entrenchments. Almost at the same moment a heavy snowstorm 
came on driving in the face of the Russians, so that they did not 
see their assailants, till they were close upon them. The attack 
could not have been made under circumstances of greater advan- 
tage. Yet so great was the skill of individual captains, and so 
stubborn the courage of some of the Russian brigades, that for a 
time the conflict was stubborn, and the issue apparently doubtful, 
Charles himself was slightly wounded, and had two horses killed 
under him; but he paid no attention to his hurt, and steadily 
pressed forward. His musketeers fired much more rapidly than 



A.D. 1700.] THE BATTLE OF NAEVA. ' 343 

even Le Fort's Frenchmen ; and two field batteries of ten guns, 
(tliey were all that he had) were served so far more effectively 
than the Kiissian cannon that they presently succeeded in making 
a small breach in the entrenchments of the camp. Small as it 
was, it was sufficient for the Swedes, who, levelling their bayonets, 
forced their way in : and the fight was over. The Russians were 
brave, but they had no discipline which could enable them to 
resist a foe which had made itself master of their defences, and 
was now among them ; they fled in wild confusion ; the foreign 
brigades, dreading their exasperated jealousy far more than the 
disciplined hostility of the conqueror, laid down their arms ; and 
soon Charles had nothing left to do, but to pursue the fugitives. 
The slaughter was not great ; the number of those who fell in the 
battle did not exceed 6,000, though many more were drowned in 
the river Narva, the wooden bridge over which broke down with 
the weight of the dense crowd which was hurrying across it, in the 
hope of finding safety on the other bank. But the prisoners were 
numei'ous beyond example ; so far exceeding the whole army of 
their conquerors, that Charles found himself unable to detain 
them ; and, contenting himself with sending the generals, and a 
few others of the highest rank, to Stockholm, set the rest at 
liberty. The whole of the Russian artillery, and supplies also fell 
into his hands, while his own loss in the battle had not exceeded 
1,200 men. 

Yet great as the victory had been, it wholly failed to daunt 
Peter, or to abate his resolution to render Russia a great military 
and naval powder. He even looked on the defeat of his troops as a 
salutary lesson, indispensable as a part of their education. In his 
opinion he could afford to be patient. He knew, he said, that the 
Swedes would still for many years be invincible ; but in time they 
would teach him how to beat them : and he persevered in the 
levy and organisation of fresh brigades. He stripped the churches 
of their bells to furnish metal for new cannon ; he procui-ed fresh 
officers from Germany : he built a squadron of ships in Lake 
Peipus, which communicates with the Narva, superintending 
their equipment with his own eyes, and training the sailors, of 
whom he brought up many companies from Azov, with the dis- 
cipline which he had learned in England. And at the same time 
he did not relax in his labours for the internal improvement of his 
Empire ; for the extension of its resources and the civilisation of 
the people. Canals were commenced to join the Don and the 
Volga, and, in connection with the different rivers which water 
the northern provinces, to connect both the Euxine and the 
Caspian Seas with the Baltic. In some districts manufactories 
for cloth and other stuffs, for which Russia had hitherto been 



344 ' MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1704 

dependent on Germany, were established ; workshops for different 
trades, and foundries for brass and iron were opened : in some, 
mines were excavated ; into others sheep and shepherds were im- 
ported. Everywhere schools were endowed, and printing presses 
were erected. Nor was he content with merely issuing his orders ; 
month after month he traversed the Empire from north to south, 
giving his untiring personal inspection to the execution of the 
details of eveiy improvement ; and so discerning and judicious was 
his superintendence, so perfect was the intelligence of all the 
most important arts which he had acquired during his foreign 
travels, and so docile were his people, that in a shorter time than 
could have been expected he began to reap some fruit from his 
labours. In less than fifteen months after the rout of Narva a 
division of Russians defeated a Swedish brigade, and captured its 
standards : and in the years 170^ and 1703 the Russian squadrons 
fought more than one action with the Swedish admirals, in which 
the advantage was not always on the side of the older sailors. 

Not indeed that the Russians were as yet a match for the 
Swedes when the numbers were equal ; much less when the latter 
were under the command of their king. But Charles, whose 
movements were more guided by resentment than policy, had, 
after his victory at Narva, led his army back to overrun Courland 
and some of the other Polish provinces, being resolved to chastise 
A ugustus for his alliance with the Czar, by stripping him of the 
Polish crown. Poland was a country whose constitution ensured 
its being a constant prey to faction ; and a decisive victory which 
Charles obtained over the troops of Augustus on the Duna was 
quite sufficient to raise and animate a party prepared to depose 
their unsuccessful sovereign, and to transfer their allegiance to any 
one whom the conqueror might elect. In the summer of 1704, a 
diet, held at Warsaw, formally declared Augustus to have forfeited 
the crown, which they conferred on Stanislaus Leczinski, a 
young man distinguished by the noblest birth and by eminent 
personal attractions and accomplishments. It was to no purpose 
that Augustus, who was not only brave but skilful, raised an 
army in Saxony to maintain his rights, and by a well concerted 
and admirably executed march upon Warsaw, not only drove his 
rival from his capital, but very nearly succeeded in taking him 
prisoner. His temporary success only aggravated his misfortunes. 
Charles, on hearing of his exploit, instantly turned back, marching 
with such celerity that he overtook the Saxon army on its way 
back to its own country before its general had the least suspicion 
of his approach, gave it a decisive defeat on the Oder; and com- 
pelled the unfortunate king to ratify his own dethronement by a 



A.D. 1704.] PETER TAIvES NARVA. 345 

formal abdication. It is painful to the historian to be forced to 
add, that he sullied his triumph by compelling Augustus to sur- 
render Patkul, to whose original exertions for the freedom of 
Livonia Charles j ustly attributed the formation of the confederacy 
against him ; but who, according to the law of nations, was pro- 
tected by his character of Russian ambassador, in which capacity 
he was at the time residing at the Saxon court. Augustus strove 
hai'd to resist a surrender which would have been disgraceful to 
him had it not been unavoidable: and, when he was at last com- 
pelled to give him up, he pleaded earnestly with the conqueror 
for mercy to the prisoner ; but Charles was implacable in his re- 
sentment, and the unhappy Livonian was put to death with the 
most inhuman tortures for the sole crime of having laboured in- 
effectually for the deliverance of his country. 

The degradation of his principal ally was a severe blow to the 
Czar; wliile it placed Charles at the pinnacle of glory, making- 
other potentates treat him as if he were almost as invincible as he 
fancied himself. The Queen of England and the King of France, 
now fiercely engaged against one another in the long and bloody 
war of the Succession, equally courted his alliance, as one that 
could not fail to be decisive of the contest : the great conqueror of 
Blenheim himself repairing to his court, in the hope by his unrivalled 
address at least to prevent his declaring for our enemies; while 
the Emperor Joseph even acquiesced in his interference with his 
government of his own dominions, and, at his demand, restored to 
the Protestants of Silesia the religious privileges of which they 
had been silently stripped since the treaty of Westphalia ; excusing 
himself to the Pope's nuncio for his compliance with the heretic 
monarch's request by the remark, that His Holiness might well be 
thankful that Charles had asked no more, since, if he had required 
him to become a Lutheran, he should hardly have dared to refuse. 
Yet so great was the difference between the practical wisdom of 
the two sovereigns, that Charles reaped no solid advantage from his 
triumph, which indeed was almost his last ; while Peter, in spite 
of his discomfiture, continued steadily to rise in real power. The 
very month after the diet had pronounced the deposition of 
Augustus, the Czar took Narva ; the scene and cause of his first 
overthrow ; and showed himself worthy of success by the exer- 
tions which he made to save the citizens from the fury of his 
soldiers, who, like savages, as too many of them still were, were 
practising the most horrid barbarities on all who fell into their 
power. Many of the most ferocious and insubordinate he slew 
with his own hands ; and when he reached the town-hall, where 
the magistrates were sitting, he laid his reeking sword on the 



346 MODEEN niSTOEY. [a.d. 1704. 

table, assuring tlie council tliat it was stained, not with the Mood 
of the citizens, hut with that of his own subjects, whom he had 
killed to save the lives of the townspeople. 

And with him the triumphs of war and those of peace went 
hand in hand. He had at all times two objects equally in view: 
to make his people prosperous, and himself, as their sovereign, 
powerful and formidable. And his principle of conduct evidently 
was that, though the internal prosperity of a country must depend 
on peace and the arts of peace, on manufactures, on commei'ce, and 
above all on education, its power, the reputation of itself and of its 
monarch arnong foreign nations could rest on no foundation but 
that of victorious war ; and, in the prosecution of these views, he 
was still diligent in increasing his army, in extending his con- 
quests in the neighbourhood of the Baltic, and in fostering the 
warlike spirit of his subjects by military displays, reviews, and 
triumphant processions on the occasion of any signal success ; most 
of which were signalised by the promotion of himself to a higher 
rank in his own army, and on one, occasion by the honour of 
knighthood being conferred on him as a reward for his personal 
gallantry in capturing two Swedish men-of-war in a naval action 
on Lake Ladoga. And at the same time he showed his unabated 
respect for the arts of peace by the vigorous prosecution of all the 
different works which have been mentioned before, and by the 
foundation of a new city at that point of the coast where the Neva 
connects Ladoga with the Gulf of Finland, to be called by his 
own name, Petersburg, and destined hereafter to become the 
metropolis of the Empire. His object in preparing the transference 
of the seat of government from the ancient and sacred Moscow to 
a maritime city, was evidently to make his country mistress of 
the Baltic; and how true was his foresight was conspicuously 
shown in the war of 1854, when the Isle of Cronslot, as it was 
called in his day, or Cronstadt, to give it its modern appellation, 
which he exerted all his skill in fortifying, as an outwork of the 
new metropolis, was found by the allied fleets to be the most 
formidable obstacle to their progress of any spot in his dominions. 

For three or four years the war between Russia and Sweden 
was carried on with comparative languor ; neither of the sovereigns 
appearing themselves at the head of their armies, Peter being fully 
occupied with the labours which have just been mentioned, and 
Charles entrusting the conduct of his military operations to lieu- 
tenants, because he was busy in arranging the aft'airs, not only of 
Poland but of Saxony also, in which he had reduced Augustus to 
submit to regulate everything according to his pleasure. At last, 
when everything was settled to his wish in that quarter, and he had 
become weary of the comparative inaction in which he had so long 



A.n. 1708.] CHAHLES INVADES RUSSIA. 347 

been resting, at the beginning of 1708 he quitted Saxouy, to com- 
mence a fi-esh campaign ; proposing to march upon Moscow, gain 
a victory under its walls, and dictate peace on his own conditions 
in the Kremlin. It was the very same dream which, a century 
later, dazzled a still greater conqueror, and led to the destruction 
of a still mightier host. His wisest ministers and even his bravest 
generals remonstrated against an enterprise which would carry the 
army so far from its resources; but the prospect of a battle for an 
empire under the walls of its capital city was too flattering to his 
pride to be relinquished after it had once been contemplated ; and, 
in July, he moved his whole army towards the central provinces of 
AVestern Russia, with an army of upwards of 50,000 men, which 
he expected to be soon augmented by 20,000 more, whom General 
Levenhaupt was leading from Livonia, with a huge train of 
supplies of all sorts, to which they were serving as an escort. He 
had achieved such mighty deeds with far inferior numbers, that 
with his present force he looked upon himself as able to subdue 
the world; and, nothing daunted by the difficulties of a long 
march through a country but partially cleared, and still full of 
forests and marshes, he rejected every overture made to him by 
the Czar, declaring that it was only in Moscow itself that he 
would negotiate. Peter, though he would gladly have made 
peace, could he have done so with honour, was well aware that 
he had become able to carry on war with greater effect than 
in former years, and fearlessly prepared for the contest which 
he had found to be unavoidable, remarking, that though his 
brother Charles desired to play Alexander, he should not find 
a second Darius in himself; and Charles did not advance far with- 
out learning that the obstacles which nature herself opposed to his 
progress w^ere not the only ones which he would have to encountei*. 
Peter, true to the resolution which he had proclaimed, had moved 
down across his line of march a force about equal to his own, 
with which he had taken up a strong position near HoUosin, 
a small town on the eastern bank of the river Bibitsch, usually a 
shallow stream, but at this time flooded by recent rains, which 
had also laid the adjacent ground under water, and converted it 
into a swamp. Charles, as impetuous as ever, would not give 
the engineers time to construct a pontoon bridge, but, throwing 
himself into the flood at the head of his cavalry, swam the river, 
swollen as it was ; and having at last, with great difficulty and 
danger, placed his army on the further bank, he at once led them 
against the Russians, who were awaiting his attack in an entrenched 
camp. Had their commanders possessed but a portion of his 
daring spirit, and opened their fire on the Swedes while they were 
toiling through the stream and the marshy ground, they might 



348 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1704. 

have destroyed the whole army. But they had not yet such 
confidence in themselves that they could venture to quit their 
entrenchments, though behind them they fought with a stubborn- 
ness that long made the event of the day doubtful. Victory did 
at length declare for Charles ; but the Russians retreated in good 
order, leaving him but few trophies or prisoners. It was evident 
that the prediction of Peter was near its fulfilment that, though 
the Swedes would beat his soldiers for some time, they would at 
last teach him to beat them. 

Proceeding rapidly onwards, Charles reached Moghilew on the 
Dnieper, Peter, who by this time had joined his army, hanging on 
his flanks, and harassing him with frequent skirmishes, in one 
of which Charles himself was only saved from capture by his 
personal prowess and skill in the use of his sword. But the 
wily Czar designed to carry on the war by other means besides 
hard fighting. The tactics by which, a century later, his successor 
inflicted such disasters on the French invader, were but a copy of 
those which Peter now employed against Charles. As the Swedes 
advanced, he laid waste the country before them : preferring to 
destroy the crops, and even the dwellings of the inhabitants to 
allowing them to furnish food and shelter to his enemy : so that 
Charles was frequently compelled solely against his will to halt 
till his foragers brought in supplies which could only be procured 
from a distance and with great difficulty, and scarcely ever in 
adequate quantities. But in difliculties he never saw anything 
but the glory of surmounting them. Moghilew is less than 400 
miles from Moscow ; and he still made no doubt of reaching it 
before the winter set in, when he was unexpectedly joined by 
Mazeppa, the Iletman, or chief, of the Cossacks, a semi-barbarous 
tribe in the south of the Empire, already renowned for their 
excellence as light cavalry. Charles was generally the most self- 
reliant and obstinate of men : but on this occasion, for probably 
the flrst time in his life, he listened to advice, and his adviser 
ruined him. 

The early career of Mazeppa had been of the most romantic 
character. By birth he was a Pole, and of a noble family ; but 
while a page in the king's household he had excited the jealousv 
of one of the great nobles of the country, whose wife, many years 
younger than himself, had been captivated with the personal 
beauty of the youth. The revenge which the old count took was 
as singular as it was inhuman ; Mazeppa was stripped naked and 
bound on the back of a wild horse, who was then turned loose to 
roam through his native forests till his unwilling rider should be 
devoured by the wild beasts, or should perish still more miserably 
of exposure and hunger. 



A.D. 1708.] THE EAELY CAEEEE OF MAZEPPA. 349 

Rash would be the historian who would adventure to relate in 
prose the horrors of that long wandering which Byron's verse 
has made immortal. The horse, 

A Tartar of the Ukraine breed, 

maddened, by his unaccustomed burden, tore through the tangled 
woods, breasted the swoln torrents, outstripped the wolves, 
who in ravenous packs pursued the pair, till at last he himself 
fell dead brokenhearted with the length and speed of his journey. 
But he had reached the ground where he had been bred, and, when 
he died, it was in sight of some of the peasants of the country, 
who released the now senseless youth, and brought him to their 
chief. He was pitied ; employed ; the proofs which he gradually 
gave of endurance and daring won him promotion: and about 
twenty years before the time of which we are speaking he had 
been elected chief, or Hetman, of his adopted tribe. He had 
reached the period allotted to human life, and was seventy years 
of age ; but time had done little to quench his vigour, or tame his 
fire. And having received, or fancied that he had received, some 
slight from the Czar, he now sought Charles's camp, undertaking 
to induce his warlike subjects to throw off the Russian yoke, and 
to range themselves under the Swedish banner. To secure a 
reinforcement so valuable, Charles relinquished his instant march 
upon Moscow, and turned southward towards the Ukraine. 

So inconsiderate was his haste that he would not even wait till 
Levenhaupt joined him, but in the early part of September quitted 
Moghilew, sending the general orders to join him on the march. 
But the Czar was well informed of Levenhaupt's movements and 
plans ; and, having taken up a favorable position on his intended 
line of march in a spot where the necessity of passing several 
small streams could not fail to cause some disorder in the Swedish 
ranks, he fell upon them the moment that they appeared ; and 
though Levenhaupt, in spite of his surprise, fought with great 
skill and resolution, it was not without the sacrifice of all his 
stores, the loss of most of his guns, and of nearly half his division, 
who were either slain or too severely wounded to be capable of 
removal, that he at last joined his royal master with the remainder, 
which had so completely exhausted its supplies, and even its 
ammunition, that it brought scarcely any real strength to the 
army which in name it reinforced. 

Nor was the loss of the supplies which they had been expected 
to bi'ing with them the only disappointment which damped the 
hopes of all, but Charles himself. It was soon ascertained that 
Mazeppa, in undertaking to induce the Cossacks to revolt, had 
promised more than he could perform. But still the king pressed 



350 MODERN HISTORY. , [a.d. 1709. 

on, hardening himself against the counsels of all who dared to 
volunteer advice to him, and who implored him, if he would not 
retreat while it was yet time, at least to halt, and to give his army 
rest for the winter in some town which he might seize and 
fortify. It was evident that such a measure alone could save the 
army from destruction, for its food was becoming scanty ; the 
men's clothes were wearing out; under the united pressure of 
cold and hunger, their numbers were diminishing daily, and their 
condition was no secret to the enemy, who, being in their own 
country, were not exposed to the same privations. But the more 
indispensable the adoption of prudent measures became, the less 
inclined was Charles to yield to them. To halt he pronounced 
timid, to retreat infamous ; still he pressed on, the Russian skir- 
mishers hanging on his flanks, harassing him with incessant petty 
attacks, and burning every village in his path which could afford 
him shelter. By the beginning of 1709, he had reached the 
Ukraine ; the extreme difficulty of finding subsistence for his 
troops greatly retai-ding his progress, and sometimes even com- 
pelling him to retrace his steps ; so that it was not till May that 
he reached Pultava; a town which, though small, was of great 
importance, as commanding the roads from some of the most 
fertile provinces of the south of Moscow ; and as containing large 
magazines of corn which were stored there for transport. As such 
the Ozar had strengthened it with a reinforcement to its usual 
garrison, and was marching himself to protect it, at the head of 
60,000 men, which was more than twice the number that the 
fatigues and losses of the winter campaign had left to his antago- 
nist. It was the middle of June before Peter arrived at 
Pultava ; the weakness of the Swedes being sufficiently proved 
by the mere fact of their having been unable to reduce it during 
the six weeks that they had been resisted by the garrison alone : 
so that neither army could have much doubt of the issue of the 
battle to which his own situation would have compelled Charles, 
even had it not been the evident purpose of the Czar to bring it 
on. It was for Charles's interest to fight without delay. Peter's 
object, on the other hand, was to postpone the conflict tiU he had 
completed his arrangements to prevent the escape of the invading 
army after it should have been defeated. And he had by this time 
acquired sufficient military skill to baffle the king's attempts to 
bring him to action before he was ready. He entrenched his 
camp with as much care as if he had been the weaker party : 
fortune aiding him in his design of deferring the battle ; since in 
a trifling skirmish Charles received a wound from a musket ball 
in his foot, which for some days wholly disabled him; and, even 
when he was able to move, confined him to a litter. At last^ on 



&.D. 1709.] THE BATTLE OF PULTAVA. 351 

the eighth of July, the Czar's arrangements were completed ; and 
he led his men from their camp to attack the enemy. As Voltaire 
has remarked, the degree in which the fame of the two antago- 
nists was staked on the result of the coming shock was far from 
equal. A single defeat would deprive Charles of the title of the 
' Invincible.' But, as Peter did not owe his surname of 'the Great' 
to his victories, the most decisive overthrow would not deprive 
him of it. As however the Russians were no longer the ill-equip- 
ped, half-disciplined multitude that had fought at Narva, the 
odds were too unequal for such a termination of the conflict to be 
probable, or even for the conflict itself to last long. The Swedes 
did not discredit their old renown; led by their undaunted 
monarch, who, wounded and sufiering as he was, was carried in a 
litter at their head, they chai'ged the Russians with such fury 
that they even captured some of the redoubts with which the 
Czar had strengthened his line. Charles himself had a narrow 
escape, a cannon shot shattering the litter on which he lay. The 
Russians, however, were but little inferior in sturdy valour, and 
Peter showed equal hardihood, and indifference to his personal 
safety, and was equally near meeting his death, several musket 
balls passing through his clothes ; at the end of two hours numbers 
prevailed; the Swedes were overpowered; regiment after regiment 
fell into disorder ; and his officers, placing their wounded king on 
a horse, hurried him from the field with about half his army ; 
the other half lay killed or wounded on the field, or fell into the 
conqueror's hands as prisoners; while the entire loss of the 
Russians did not greatly exceed 1,300 men. 

As far as his prisoners were concerned, Peter did not make a 
generous use of his victory. He complimented some of the chief 
officers with fine speeches, calling them his masters in the art of 
war ; but he limited his courtesy to those of the highest rank ; 
and all the rest were sent into Siberia. But as a soldier and a 
statesman, he showed great ability by the promptitude of the 
measures which he took to reap all the fruits of his achievement. 
That vei-y night he sent a strong division in pursuit of Charles ; 
and, so demoralised were the Swedes by their defeat, that the main 
body, as soon as it was overtaken, surrendered without striking a 
blow : and the king was left with only a body-guard of a few 
hundred men to prosecute his retreat towards the Swedish ter- 
ritories. The diplomatic and political talents which Peter dis- 
played were even more conspicuous, and led to more important 
successes. He at once opened negotiations with the diff'erent 
sovereigns of northern and western Europe, who, through good 
will, or admiration, or fear, had hitherto ranged themselves on 
the side of Charles. He expelled Stanislaus from Poland, and 



352 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1709. 

replaced Augustus on his throne. In a personal interview witli 
Frederic of Prussia, who had lately been allowed to convert hia 
inarquisate into a kingdom, he bound him to his interests ; and, 
having thus deprived Charles of his allies, he proceeded with all 
rapidity to strip him of all his and his predecessor's conquests, 
reducing Elbing, Viborg, Riga, and Revel ; and thus accomplish- 
ing his long-cherished wish for the acquisition of harbours which 
might enable him to become powerful at sea as well as on land. 

I have said that in some points the two rivals resembled each 
other in character ; in others they differed widely ; and in nothing 
was the difference more seen than in the effect which the great 
battle had, on what may be called, the private conduct of each. 
The Czar bore his success with the most magnanimous equanimity. 
He did not even assume to himself the chief credit of his victory, 
though in truth it was he himself who had planned the operations 
which contributed to ensure it, and though he fought throughout 
the day at the head of his troops ; but, in the triumph with which 
he celebrated it on his return to Moscow, the place of honour was 
still ceded to others ; and he marched in the place belonging to 
his military rank of major-general. But if Peter was not in- 
toxicated by victory, Charles, on the other hand, was rendered 
more proud and obstinate than ever by defeat. The Sultan gave him 
an asylum at Bender, in Bessarabia, with appointments befitting 
a crowned head ; but he requited his kindness by wrangling with 
the vizier about money ; sowing intrigues and dissensions in the 
divan ; insulting all from whom assistance was to be expected, 
till, after bearing for several years the burdensome and costly 
honour of protecting hitn, the Saltan was driven to insist on his 
withdrawal, and as he would not comply with the request to 
retire, to remove him by force ; which could not be effected with- 
out a regular siege and assault, in which the house which had 
been allotted to Charles was burned, and many Swedes and Turks 
were killed. He survived his return to his kingdom but a very 
few years ; and they were neither happy nor honorable. He 
found all the resources of the country so completely exhausted by 
his own long wars, and through the disorders incident to his 
long absence, that he was forced to listen to proposals of peace 
with tlie Czar, or Emperor, as, since Pultava, Peter had been 
generally called ; but, as he could not endure to be without some 
military occupation, he consoled himself for his inability to attack 
Russia, by an attempt to subdue Norway ; and, in that countiy, 
while besieging Frederickshall, a strongly fortified town on the 
shores of the bay which leads to Christiania, he was killed by a 
cannon shot in the trenches in December 1718. He was only 
thirty-six years of agej and short as his life had been, it bad been 



A.D. 1718.] THE DEATH OF THE CZAROVITCH. 353 

long enough to crown him witli the highest glory and to 
overwhelm him in the lowest disaster. His military talents were 
probably overrated in his day ; but, had they been more con- 
siderable than they were, they would not have been allowed fair 
play, so often were his enterprises dictated or guided not by 
scientific calculations, but by notions of what became his dignity. 
It seemed a strange freak of fortune that a hero who had come 
unhurt out of so many pitched battles, should perish by a chance 
shot from a fortress of which, till it was rendered memorable by 
his death, few people had ever heard the name. But we may 
accept the moral which a great philosopher from among ourselves 
has drawn from it, and agree that such an end affords an in- 
structive proof of the vanity of the hopes of the warrior, and of 
the pride of the conqueror.^ 

The latter years of his victorious rival, though more honorably 
and more beneficially employed, were not happier than his. Peter 
had, indeed, the satisfaction of seeing his enlightened labours 
meet their steadily increasing reward in the progressive expansion 
of all the resources of his kingdom, the growth of its warlike 
power and political influence, and in the material improvement of 
the character and condition of his people. But occurrences in hia 
own family caused him great disquietude, and led him into great 
crime. It is recorded of him that on one occasion he lamented that 
he had not been able to effect more in civilising his subjects than 
in controlling himself; throughout his life he was prone to give 
way to the most violent fits of passion, and he was pitiless and 
inhuman when under their influence. As the great object of his 
life had been the reform of his empire, so no oflence could, in his 
eyes, be equal to an indifference to his plans for its attainment. 
When only twenty-four years of age he had repudiated his first 
wife Eudoxia, and confined her in a convent, because she showed 
an attachment to the old national customs which he was abolish- 
ing : and he now found that her son Alexis, the heir to his throne, 
sliared her prejudices. It was not only on the question of smoking 
that the priests condemned the Czar's innovations: and though 
not much under the influence of their precepts in his own way 
of life, Alexis had fully imbibed their political notions ; and not 
only denounced his father's measures, but made no secret of hia 
desire, when he should become Emperor, to restore the principles 
and customs of former ages. The quarrels between him and his 

' On what foundation stands the warrior's pride, 
How just his hopes, let Swedish Charles decide. 

He left a name at which the world grew pale, 
To point a moral or adorn a talc' 

Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes, 190. 



354 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1713. 

father became violent ; Peter threatened to disinherit him : Alexis 
at one time offered to give up the succession, and proposed to 
become a monk ; but he soon repented of such a renunciation of 
his rights, and, dreading his father's rage, fled from the country, 
first seeking the protection of the Emperor, and subsequently 
taking refuge in Italy. Peter's indignation was excessive. The 
old laws of the Empire gave the Czar the power of life and 
death over his children ; and departure from the country with- 
out his permission was especially named as a capital crime, 
though it was obvious that the penalty could not be executed till 
the offence had been effaced by the fugitive's return. Resolved to 
get his son into his power, Peter sent the most conciliatory mes- 
sages to Naples, promising him not only forgiveness, but a com- 
plete and cordial reinstatement in his affections ; and the moment 
that Alexis yielded to these professions and returned to Moscow, 
he arrested him ; compelled him to sign a deed recognising and 
ratifying his disinheritance ; and then, having drawn from him, by 
a long and rigorous examination, a confession that he had more 
than once wished him dead, and from the j udges an opinion that 
the entertainment of such an idea was itself an act of pariicide, he 
brought him to trial, and pronounced on him a formal sentence of 
death. He was saved the guilt of carrying it into execution, since 
the young prince was so terrified at the reading of the sentence 
that he fell down in a tit, and died the next day ; recovering hia 
senses before his death sufiiciently to implore pardon of his father, 
who came to his bedside, and mingling his own tears with those 
of the dying youth, assured him of hig forgiveness. It may be 
fancied that the forgiveness would not have been so easily granted 
had it not been clear that it would be ineffectual : and the Czar's 
warmest admirers, while rejoicing that their hero was thus saved 
from staining his name with the infamy with which the death of 
Don. Carlos has for ever branded the memory of Philip, can hardly 
refuse to agree with Voltaire that his treatment of his son would 
deservedly render him odious, if the benefits which he conferred 
on his whole nation did not lead posterity to overlook it in con- 
sideration of his great services, and of the noble example which in 
other matters he set to all the sovereigns of the world. 

Though he was not, like his rival Charles, prematurely cut off 
by the chances of war, he was not permitted to enjoy a long life ; 
he had from his youth been subject to fits, perhaps originally 
brought on, certainly aggravated, by intemperance in the use of 
ardent spirits. And in the summer of 1724, though he was only 
fifty-two years old, his strength was seen to be decaying. He 
was warned that he required repose ; but his mind was too restless, 
his earnestness in the prosecution of his different objects too 



A.D. 1726.] DEATH OF PETER. 355 

vehement to let him allow himself the needful relaxation ; and his 
end was nobly characteristic ; though he had become unable to 
walk or ride, he could move about the coast in his yacht to seo 
the works which were in progress for the completion of the differ- 
ent harbours and dockyards in which he took unabated interest. 
With this object, in the last month of the year, he was visiting a small 
port on the coast of Finland, when a boat was upset, and its crew, 
thrown helplessly among the breakers, was in imminent danger of 
being drowned ; ill as he was, he sprang into the water, and by 
his own exertions saved several lives ; but the strain and the chill 
aggravated his complaints, inflammation set in, and on the twenty- 
fifth of January 1725 he died. 

For such a man there is no need of a detailed and laboured 
panegyric. His acts speak for themselves. In the year 1721 the 
Senate, while entreating him to exchange the old form of Czar for 
the title of Emperor of all the Russias, added to it by formal 
decree the surnames of the Great, and the Father of his Country. 
The former, as we have seen, had been sadly prostituted among 
other nations : the latter had in modern times been conferred on 
no one, nor in either modern or ancient times had it ever been 
better deserved.* Though it cannot be said of him that he had 
an innate talent for war, he was a great conqueror, and the acqui- 
sitions which he made being chiefly of maritime provinces were 
exactly such as most tended to promote the prosperity of the coun- 
try, facilitating the great object of creating a foreign commerce ; 
his wars are not indeed entirely free from the charge of aggres- 
sion, yet no aggressive wars have had greater excuse, since the 
provinces which he aimed at wresting from Sweden were only 
those which that country had itself acquired by successful war 
within the century. But the glory of a legislator is far beyond 
that of a conqueror ; and in that respect it is hardly possible to 
over-estimate his merits. He found his subjects little better than 
barbarians : ignorant not only of polite and scientific learning, but 
of the arts, without which no nation can be accounted civilised, 
and of the trades and manufactures for which no people ouo-ht to 
depend on others. This disabling stigma he removed ; and though 
his life was not prolonged sufiiciently for him to see the comple- 
tion of the work which he had prescribed for himself, yet 
he had laid the foundations of civilised refinement, order, and 
progress so surely, that his people never retrograded, but has gone 
on ever since his time increasing in prosperity and reputation. 
The great Eoman poet boasted of the practical genius of his 

1 The Romans, who invented the Brennns ; and on Cicero, after the 
title, conferred it on the first Brutus ; detection of the Catilinarian cou- 
on Camillus, after his defeat of spiracy. 



356 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1725. 

countrymen for government and legislation as far superior to 
those faculties which had made the Greeks their superiors in 
■works of art, and even in the triumphs of eloquence. In the same 
spirit the Russians might have compared their great Peter with 
the contemporary prince whom the Parisians had honoured with 
the same appellation, and might have boasted with truth that 
while Louis could organise a review and turn a marsh into a 
flower garden, Peter could create an army, found an empire, and 
reform a nation.* 

1 The authorities for this chapter and Cliarles, and Barrow's Life oj 
are chiefly Voltaire's Lives of Peter Peter. 



A.n. 1273.] THE KISE OF PEUSSIA. - 357 



CHAPTER XVI. 
A.D. 1273—1745. 

I^HE same month -whicli witnessed the failure of the Czar's 
- attempt to extend his territories by the reduction of Narva, 
beheld, in a province not very distant from that scene of action, 
an event of a different character vsrhich was destined to have at 
least as great an effect on the subsequent political history of 
Europe as even the introduction of Russia into the list of civilised 
nations. On the sixteenth of November 1700, a treaty was 
signed between Leopold, emperor' of Germany, and Frederic, 
margrave of Brandenburgh, who was also Duke of Prussia and au 
Elector of the Empire, which authorised that prince to exchange 
his coronet for a royal crown, and to assume the title of King of 
Prussia: and in the first month of the new century the new 
sovereign was crowned with great pomp at Konisberg. It would 
be more correct to say that he crowned himself, since, though he 
had already exerted his kingly authority by creating two bishops 
to give an air of sanctity to the ceremony, he placed the crown 
on his head with his own hands as a sort of proclamation that he 
was not indebted to either priest or Emperor for his new dignity, 
but that he had both right and power to take it upon himself 

The Kings of Prussia are spoken of as belonging to the family of 
IlohenzoUern, a small district to the north of the Lake of Con- 
stance, which they possessed with the rank of Count in the Middle 
Ages. They were nearly related to the Counts of Hapsburgh ; and 
in 1273, Frederic, the reigning Count of HohemzoUern, who was 
also Margrave of Nuremberg, is understood to have contributed in 
no slight degree to the elevation of Eodolph to the Imperial 
throne. The new Emperor and his successors were not ungrateful : 
the descendants of Frederic were not scrupulous nor unskilful in 
profiting by their gratitude : by marriage, by negotiation, and by 
purchase, they steadily augmented the family estates, till, by the 
beginning of the fifteenth century, they had acquired Culmbach, 
Anspach, and Bayreuth ; crowning their acquisitions in Germany 
when, in 1417, they persuaded the Emperor Sigismund to sell 
them the Margravinte of Brandenburgh, and, as margraves, became 



358 . MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1618, 

Electors of the Empire. A century later they extended their 
possessions beyond the borders of Germany, when, at the end of a 
long war, in wbichi the knig-hts of the Teutonic order had been 
engaged, with Sigismund, king of Poland, that monarch was 
reduced to sue for peace, and obtained it on condition of erecting 
the eastern part of Prussia into a duchj--, and conferring it on the 
Grand-Master Albert of Brandenburgh, a cousin of the reigning 
margrave. The knights who had previously held that portion of 
Prussia as a fief of Poland were not inclined to acquiesce in their 
grand-master thus enriching himself at their expense ; they carried 
their complaints to Vienna, where the Emperor, little more 
pleased than they at such an addition to the power of a family 
which he seems to have foreseen might become formidable to his 
5wn, pronounced sentence that Albert should restore the duchy to 
the knights ; and, on his refusal, put him under the ban of the 
Empire. But the Empire was at that moment too much weakened 
by religious divisions to be able to enforce the decrees : and the 
house of Brandenburgh had not been used to pay much regard to 
empty words, unsupported by substantial force. Albert held the 
duchy in spite of the Emperor and the diet : and, by following the 
lead of the head of his house in adopting the religion of the Re- 
formation, secured himself a body of allies whose aid would have 
rendered the enforcement of the ban impossible had any attempt 
been made to execute it. He held Prussia till his death, and 
when, a generation or two later, his branch of the family became 
extinct, the dominions which he had acquired devolved on the head 
of the family, and the Elector of Brandenburgh, by the addition 
of the Duchy of Prussia, became the most powerful prince on the 
north-eastern side of Europe. 

So greatly, however, in that age did the prosperity of every 
kingdom or principality depend on the personal character of its 
ruler that, though before the breaking out of the Thirty Years' 
War, the Elector had received the further augmentation of the 
great Rhenish Duchy of Oleves, the heiress of which had married 
a cadet of his house, to whose inheritance he had succeeded, 
Brandenburgh had no influence on the fate of the war, but on the 
contrary suffered from it as severely as any province of the Em- 
pire. The Elector George, an unwarlike prince, sought to save 
himself by taking part with the Emperor against his brother Pro- 
testants ; he only brought on himself the hostility of the Swedes, 
to whose assaults his dominions, from their position, were par- 
ticularly exposed. At the same time his Rhenish possessions were 
overrun by the United States; and, had he lived to see the end of 
the war, his heir would, in all probability, have succeeded to a 
greatly diminished inheritance. 



A.D. 1640.] CHAEACTEE OF THE GEEAT ELECTOE. 359 

But lie died in ] 640. And his eldest son, Frederic "William, 
thougli only twenty years of age, was of a very different character. 
He was not only endowed with great courage, but, young as he 
was, he already possessed that prompt j udgment which sees from 
the first the object to be aimed at, and the best means of attaining 
it; and, with a firmness of purpose which allows nothing to inter- 
fere with the steady prosecution of it, he resolved from the first 
to re-establish his electorate in all its former reputation and power. 
But it was no easy task that he had before him. His treasury was 
so impoverished that it was in the last degree needful for him to 
avoid engaging in war : while, at the same time, it was indis- 
pensable for him to make treaties with and to obtain concessions 
from his neighbours, which were not likely to be granted unless 
he was understood to be prepared for war. By skilful manage- 
ment he contrived to levy and equip a small body of troops, and 
the unprecedented duration and ferocity of the Thirty Years' War 
Lad so exhausted the resources of all the surrounding potentates 
that the very smallest force of fresh troops seemed almost able to 
turn the scale. He was thus enabled to negotiate with such effect, 
every prince fearing to drive him into the arms of his enemies, 
that he not only induced the Swedes to withdraw from Branden- 
burgh, and the Hessians, in the pay of the United States, to retire 
from Cleves, but he even worked upon the Emperor to secularise 
some ecclesiastical sees, and to add them to his dominions : so 
that when, eight years after his accession, the general war was 
terminated by the peace of Westphalia, he had not only repaired 
the injury which his territories had suffered, but had extended 
them, and established a reputation for himself which was sure to 
be the stepping-stone to further honours and acquisitions. 

The treaty of Westphalia was little more than a respite, and a 
substitution of a war with one pretext and title for a war with 
another. And, besides the qualities of which we have spoken, 
Frederic William had another not much less useful, the faculty 
of discerning, if not which side would ultimately prevail in a con- 
test, at all events to which his alliance would seem to be most 
useful, and by which his services were likely to be most liberally 
requited. In obedience to this instinct in the wars which en- 
sued between the Empire and France he adhered steadily to 
Leopold ; not indeed always to the enhancement of his own re- 
putation, since, as commander-in-chief of the German forces on 
the Rhine in 1674 and 1675, he proved altogether unable to cope 
with Turenne, but was routed at Turkheim, and driven back across 
the river, with the loss of two-thirds of his army : but his dis- 
comfiture in the field produced no change in his policy ; and he 
continued to be the only one of all the German princes who was 



360 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1688. 

at all times proof against the promises or gifts of the Freneli 
monarch. Knowing that superfluous modesty is as great a bar to 
the advancement of a prince as to the prosperity of a subject, he 
did not conceal that he desired a practical recognition of the value 
of his assistance, not that the reward which he desired was the 
advancement to the rank of king ; but it was far from being con- 
sistent with the system of the Emperor to raise other princes, or 
to allow them to raise themselves, to dignities which could in 
any way claim an equality with his own; and before Frederic 
William could overcome Leopold's reluctance to gratify him, he 
died, in the spring of 1688, at the very moment that events were 
at hand which would have made his possible hostility a danger to 
be averted at any price. 

His son Frederic could not of course succeed at once to all his 
reputation and influence ; but he inherited all his political views 
and wishes, and also his judgment as to the means by which, they 
could most surely be accomplished. He perseveringly increased 
his army ; and when, in the thirteenth year of his reign, the afiairs 
of Spain introduced fresh complications into the policy of every 
kingdom in Europe, his alliance had become of such importance 
that the Emperor, however unwilling, could no longer refuse to 
purchase it at the price at which he himself valued it, but, as we 
have seen, gave a formal consent, not the less valid for being re- 
luctant, to his assuming the kingly crown, 

Frederic, thus become king of a kingdom bearing one name, in- 
stead of sovereign prince of a number of principalities of various 
denominations, felt that his new position required increased exer- 
tions to maintain it, and that the mere name of king would not 
sulfice to place him on a footing of real equality with the older 
monarchs of Christendom. He had won his new dignity by his 
attention to his army. He now applied himself to extend his own 
reputation and to expand the resources of his country by the arts 
of peace. Pie felt that however indispensable to an infant king- 
dom it may be to have credit for warlike spirit and military power, 
nothing can moi-e surely check its growth than war. And, there- 
fore, he confined his eftbrts in that direction to putting Prussia in 
a state of ostentatious fitness for action, and was equally careful 
at the same time to save iier from diminishing her strength by 
exerting it in the field. And by maintaining peace throughout 
the whole of his reign he obtained leisure for important adminis- 
trative reforms ; establishing a system of general education, with a 
view to which, he encouraged some of the most eminent scholars 
in Europe to settle in his dominions, founded schools and uni- 
versities, and, by the advice of the great Leibnitz, establiahed an 



A.n. 1713.] CHAEACTER OF FREDERIC WILLIAM I. 361 

Academy of Science, of which lie appointed Leibnitz himself the 
first president. He was equally zealous in promoting manufac- 
tures and an . improved system of agriculture ; and at his death, in 
1713, every part of the kingdom showed how sound a judgment 
had directed all his efforts for its improvement. 

His son, who succeeded him on the throne under the name of 
Frederic William I., was of a very different character. He had, 
indeed, inherited hie father's desire to augment and extend the 
reputation and power of his kingdom ; he dissented widely from 
most of his views of the means by which the result was to be ac- 
complished. Being a man of the most narrow mind, he discouraged 
commerce, believing, with a strange political economy, that its 
chief effect was to render a nation dependent on the industry of 
others rather than on its own. On literature and art he looked 
with still greater aversion, as tending to render his people effemi- 
nate, and to implant in them a fondness for foreign fashions. 
* Nothing,' he said, ' was ever got by the pen ; acquisitions could 
only be made by the sword :' and, accordingly, his army was from 
the first the sole object of his attention. And even that, though 
he himself had ^served in the Netherlands during the war of the 
Succession, he had not learned from Marlborough and Eugene to 
regard with the capacious views of a great general. He looked 
at it with a mixture of the feelings of a recruiting officer and a 
drill sergeant ; even disbanding the militia that it might not 
interfere with the levies for the regular army, and instituting an 
unprecedently severe code of military law for the enforcement of 
discipline. To bring all ranks more completely under its obliga- 
tions, he also abolished the last relics of the feudal system which 
still lingered in his German states, and by which the chief tenants 
of the crown were bound to render military service ; commuting 
the burdens for which they were liable for a yearly payment, 
which replenished his military chest, and thus enabled him to 
raise additional regiments without having recourse to increased 
taxation. Nothing could cramp the genius of the people more 
than to have the whole energy of the government directed into 
one channel, and to find a knowledge of militaiy drill the sole 
avenue to royal favour and distinction. Yet it cannot be denied 
that this king's unremitting attention to his favourite object did 
ulso prove advantageous to the kingdom in subsequent years, when 
tfhe sceptre had passed into other hands : for, as far as his own 
objects were concerned, his system was eminently successful. In 
Jiis father's time th'e army barely amounted to 39,000 men. At 
the end of twenty-seven years he left to his successor between 
eighty and ninety thousand, of which an unutiual proportion were 
11 



362 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1725. 

cavalry and artillery ; a force inferior to that of no sovereign, but 
the King of France, though the population of his kingdom was 
almost the smallest in Christendom. 

Nor, in spite of his professed disdain for the achievements of the 
pen, did he neglect the opportunities which the troubles and 
necessities of other nations afforded him of extending his dominions 
and his influence by diplomacy. Charles XII., as we have seen 
in the last chapter, was still in Turkey when he cam.e to the 
throne ; and, skilfully availing himself of that warlike prince's 
absence to negotiate with his heir presumptive, he obtained from 
him the cession of the greater part of Pomerania, which even 
Charles himself on his return was unable to recover ; though to 
preserve it, Frederic was compelled to depart from his usually 
pacific policy, and to unite with Russia and Poland in the brief 
war by which Stralsund was finally wrested from Sweden. 
Family ties bound him so closely to George I. of England, whose 
daughter was his queen, that it would not be fair to lay very 
great stress on the treaties of mutual guarantee which he con- 
cluded with that prince: but the treaty of Hanover, by which 
France as well as England entered into a close alliance with 
V Russia, and engaged to support Frederic's claims to the important 
duchies of Juliers and Berri, was an indisputable recognition of 
the weight which he had acquired in the political system of 
Europe. It was also a foreshadowing of the course which Prussia 
would hereafter take of combining with France in her inveterate 
opposition to the House of Austria : and as such, it may be said to 
have been the foundation of that long rivalry between northern 
and southern Germany of which the present generation has wit- 
nessed, or, it may be more correct to say, is still witnessing, the 
development. 

Nor was it a weaker acknowledgment of his importance that 
when Augustus, King of Poland as well as of Saxony, conceived 
the idea (the original germ of the partition which was carried out 
forty years later) of sacrificing a portion of his Polish territories 
to procure the hereditary possession of the rest, he not only felt 
the necessity of procuring the consent of Prussia, as well as that of 
Austria and Russia, but the portion with which he proposed to 
purchase Frederic William's acquiescence was far more extensive 
and valuable than that which he oiTered to Charles VI. While 
apparently it was chiefly owing to the Prussian sovereign's percep- 
tion of the mutual jealousies which must arise in the attempt to 
carry out any such project that it was rejected, or rather tempo- 
rarily laid aside. 

For many years Frederic William was greatly disquieted lest 
his son, when it should be his turn to succeed him, should neglect 



i.D. 1725.] HIS TREATMENT OF HIS FAMILY. 363 

or undo the military system to the organisation of which he had 
devoted all his faculties. Not that the Crown Prince, as he was 
entitled, showed any disinclination or inaptitude for military 
studies, but that he did not permit them to engross his whole 
attention as they monopolised that of his father. The young 
Frederic was willing to be a soldier ; but he was at the same time 
accessible to more humanising influences. Pie had an ear for 
music ; he was not without a taste for the fine arts ; though with- 
out much judgment, he had an earnest fondness for poetry and 
learning, and, as Germany had as yet no national literature, he 
applied himself with diligence to the study of the French language 
and the most celebrated French writers. In spite of the treaty 
of Hanover, Frederic William hated the French: he hated in- 
deed aU foreigners, but, being a firm Protestant, and a zealous, 
if not a very intelligent theologian, he regarded the French with 
peculiar detestation as not only Roman Catholics, but infidels : and 
his mode of expressing his disapprobation was never gentle. No 
monarch of whom modern history has preserved a record was so 
savage in his temper or so brutal in his way of showing his anger. 
He would cane clergymen in the street for stopping to admire the 
splendid appearance of his troops, proud as he himself was of the 
display. He would rush into a court of justice and kick the 
judges oiTthe bench, if they ventured to pronounce a sentence at 
variance with his opinion or caprice. His eldest daughter, the 
Margravine of Bayreuth, who has left us an account of her own 
early years, declares that after she was grown up, her father would 
seize her by the hair with one hand while he battered her face 
with the doubled fist of the other. And he was not likely to be 
more considerate towards his son. At first, when he found that 
the youth took a delight in fine clothes, and amused his leisure 
hours with playing on the flute, he contented himself with burn- 
ing his laced coat, pulling his hair out of his head, and breaking 
his flute over it. Presently he grew more violent. The Austrian 
ambassador. Count Seckendorf, could find no better expedient fcr 
hindering a double marriage which the Queen of Prussia, sister of 
George II. of England, was bent on promoting between her son 
and daughter and an English prince and princess, than that of 
instilling into the royal ear doubts of his son's attachment to the 
Protestant faith. Frederic William turned divine. Every day he 
assembled his family in his private chapel ; where, after the valet 
de charabre had led them in a hymn, he himself preached them a 
sermon. Frederic and his sister laughed, and such combined dis- 
loyalty and heresy drove the preacher to madness. On one occa- 
sion he tried to push his daughter into the fire ; on another to 
strangle his son with the cord of the window curtain. At times 



364 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1740. 

he even accompanied his cruelty witli the grossest public insult : 
on one occasjou causing him to be caned in front of his regiment ; 
and reproaching him for submitting to the outrage, with the re- 
mark that if he himself had been treated in such a manner by his 
father he should have shot himself. So fierce and implacable did 
his hatred of his son seem to be, and so miserable did he render his 
■whole life, that at last, when Frederic was eighteen years of age, 
he took the resolution of escaping from the country, and seeking an 
asylum in France or England. But the plan reached the ears of 
the king, and, in his eyes, nothing more was wanted to justify him 
in proceeding to extremities with one whom he regarded as an 
undutiful son, a refractory subject, and an insubordinate soldier. 
Many years had not elapsed since, for disapproving of his reforms 
and taking refuge from his displeasure in a foreign land, the Czar 
had publicly condemned his son to death : and in many respects 
the misbehaviour of the Prussian prince closely resembled the 
offence of Alexis ; while his military rank seemed to facilitate a 
more expeditious mode of dealing with him. He was put under 
arrest, and brought to trial before a court-martial for meditating 
desertion. It was to no purpose that the members of the court 
declared princes of the royal family beyond their jurisdiction ; and 
that some of them added an opinion that the articles of war, to 
which the king appealed, were not applicable to the case. Oppo- 
sition only increased the king's exasperation ; and it was not till 
the sovereigns of Sweden, Poland, and Russia had all interceded 
for the prisoner, and till Charles VI. had formally claimed his 
liberation as a Prince of the Empire, and as such not amenable to 
any ordinary tribunal, that his unnatural father laid aside his idea 
of putting him to death, and contented himself with sentencing him 
to close imprisonment in the fortress of Custrin, and compelling 
him to witness the execution of a young officer, Lieutenant Katte, 
who had been the confidant of his design. 

In the spring of 1740, to the joy of the whole nation, Frederic 
William died. The Crown Prince, who had gradually contrived to 
soften his father's displeasure, and even to gain some degree of his 
favour, succeeded to the throne ; and never did a change in the 
person of its ruler produce a more instant and complete alteration 
in any country. Frederic William's energies had been spent on 
the organisation of an army, which he had no heart to employ ; on 
the rehearsal of manoeuvres, which, with his own goodwill, were 
never intended to be put in practice. The father had an inter- 
view with the great Eugene in 1732, who estimated his cha- 
racter at a glance. ' He dreamt of nothing, but military matters ; 
but only of such as parades, drills, short jackets, and tall men.'^ 
* Memoirs of Prince Eugene, year 1732, p. 1G2, cd. 1811. 



A.D. 1740.] DEA.TH OF THE EMPEEOE. 365 

But when two years afterwards, the son was permitted to join the 
old Prince, the most renowned of living warriors, on the Rhine, 
Eugene conceived a far higher idea of his capacity, and speaks of 
him in his Memoirs as a young man of ' infinite promise.'^ He 
no doubt meant of promise as a soldier, the subject on which he 
hioiself was best qualified to pronounce an opinion. And Frederic 
had been but a few months on the throne when circumstances pre- 
sented him with an opportunity of showing how correct was 
Eugene's judgment of the difference between his father's abilities 
and his own. 

In the autumn of the same year the Emperor, Charles VI., also 
died, and was succeeded in his hereditary dominions by his daughter 
Maria Teresa, who now became Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, 
and Archduchess of Austria, and who was married to Francis, duke 
of Lorraine. Had Francis been the son of Charles, his election as 
King of the Romans and successor to the Imperial dignity would 
have been a matter of course, and, as his son-in-law, Charles would 
hardly have found any greater difficulty in obtaining for him 
the suffrages of the electors : but, with unaccountable carelessness, 
strangely contrasted with the prudent foresight which he had 
exercised in removing all obstacles to his datighter's succession, he 
had neglected to take the necessary steps in favour of her husband ; 
and his death had therefore left the Empire vacant. His neglect 
should have made no difference. No one but Frederic could dis- 
turb what might be called the natural order of things, according 
to which the electors would have at once conferred the Imperial 
dignity on the husband of the head of the House of Austria, 
which had uninterruptedly enjoyed it for so many generations. 
And no prince in Europe was so bound to aid Chailes's daughter 
as Frederic, who owed his very life to her father's intercession. 
But obligations of gratitude, scruples of conscience, or considera- 
tions of anything but personal interest, were never to influence the 
course of the young prince, who, having j ust attained sovereign 
power, longed to convince himself and the world of its reality. 
He saw in the sex of Maria Teresa, and in her situation, (she was 
on the point of a confinement), only a helplessness which pointed 
her out as a promising object for immediate attack. He knew 
that the treasury at Vienna was nearly exhausted; that the 
Austrian army had been allowed to dwindle down to a force 
scarcely exceeding 30,000 men ; while he himself had upwards of 
80,000, admirably trained, and fully provided ; and an exchequer 
which his father's economical if not avaricious management had 

1 Ibid., year 1734, p. 169: 'Le not dictated by flattery, for Eugene 
prince royal, qui me parut promettre died two j'ears afterwards, some time 
iufiniiuent;' and this remark was before Frederic came to the throne. 



366 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1741. 

left better filled than that of any other sovereign. He looked 
around him for a pretext for war : and those who seek such are 
rarely at a difficulty in finding one. He set up a claim to Silesia, a 
province of the Bohemian kingdom. It was not altogether a new 
claim, hut it was more untenable than if it had never before been 
heard of, since one of his ancestors in the preceding century, after 
advancing it, had formally abandoned it, and had even received 
a small indemnification for so doing. Nor, indeed, though Frederic 
now reasserted it in a public manifesto, did he pretend to conceal 
that he had no strong belief in its validity or justice. In one of his 
familiar letters he confessed to his correspondent that his actuating 
motive was a desire of glory, and the pleasure of seeing his name 
in newspapers, and hereafter in history ; and in the autobiographi- 
cal Memoirs which he left behind him, he admits the inducements 
to have been the ' deplorable state of the court of Vienna; with 
its finances in disorder, its army ruined, its ministers disunited, 
and a youthful inexperienced princess at the head of the govern- 
ment.' ^ These circumstances afforded a prospect of ' acquiring 
reputation, and augmenting the power of the state," which he 
could not resist. He relied also on the inveterate hostility of 
France towards the House of Austria for providing him with an 
ally whose aid in such a war would be more effective than that of 
any other power. And with such rapidity did he form his reso- 
lution and act upon it, that, though it was not till the twentieth 
of October that the Emperor died, in the first week of December 
he despatched his envoy to Vienna to demand the cession of Silesia, 
and at the same time, with a discourteous bad faith, refused to 
wait for an answer to his demand, but at once poured his troops 
into the province. For a time he was unopposed and successful ; 
Breslau the capital, and all the chief fortresses were wholly un- 
provided with means of resistance, and surrendered without a 
struggle; but when, by the beginning of April, the queen had 
been able to assemble an army sufficient to give him battle, his 
own share in the action which ensued threw no little doubt not 
only in his military skill, but for a moment even on his courage. 
The armies were pretty equally matched in point of numbers, 
neither exceeding 20,000 men ; but the queen's cavalry was the 
more numerous ; the ground on which the battle was fought was 
favorable to that force ; and when the Austrian hussars had 
beaten back the Prussian cavalry, and Frederic, who, to quote his 
own expression, ' thought he might rally cavalry as he would stop 
a pack of hounds,' ' found himself imable to restore order, he 
gave up all hopes of victory, and rode from the field with a small 

' History of my own Times, by Frederic II., c.ii. Holcroft's Translation. 



A.D. 1741.] IHAEIA TEEESA AT PEESBURG. 367 

escort to the shelter of the neighbouring town of Oppeln. His 
flight nearly led him into the very misfortune which it was intended, 
to avoid ; for an Austrian squadron was in possession of Oppeln, 
and made prisoners of the escoi-t, very nearly capturing Frederic 
himself, who was only saved by the fleetness of his horse. What- 
ever personal vanity he had must have been deeply mortified when 
at night he learnt that Marshal Schwerin, his second in command, 
had held his ground with the infantry with such tenacity and skill 
that he had finally retrieved the fortune of the day, and had driven 
the Austrians from the field, with the loss of above 1,000 prisoners 
and several guns and colours. But Frederic was a man willing to 
learn even from his own blunders, and singularly candid in detect- 
ing them. He never flattered himself. In his Memoirs he frankly 
gives the whole credit of the victory to the marshal, admits that 
his own generalship aflbrded ' a great cause for censure,' but 
' Molwitz was his school : he made profound reflections on all the 
faults which he had committed, and endeavoured to correct him- 
self in future.' ' 

Comparatively small as had been the number of the combatants, 
the victory had important political consequences. It encouraged 
the Elector of Bavaria to advance claims to other parts of the 
queen's dominions which, though less justifiable than even those 
proposed by Prussia, were rendered formidable by the co-opera- 
tion of the French court, which also successfully exerted its 
influence with the Electors to obtain for him the Imperial crown ; 
while George the Second's anxiety for Hanover led him to keep 
England neutral, though his English subjects were zealous 
partisans of Maria Teresa. For a moment it seemed impossible 
that she, unsupported by a single ally, could make head against 
such a combination ; but she was worthy of her position, and of 
her race ; and, true to her people and to herself, confronted all her 
difiiculties and dangers with unshaken courage. The story has 
often been told (and none wiU better bear repetition) how she 
summoned the Hungarian states to Presburg, and, in the ancient 
castle of the capital, still clad in deep mourning for her father, but 
wearing the crown of St. Stephen on her head, and girt with the 
consecrated scimetar, the symbol of authority worn by her manly 
predecessors, threw herself fearlessly on the loyalty and support 
of the nation. She laid before the assembled deputies her present 
troubles, her impending danger : some of her territories were 
already invaded by the enemy, the rest were threatened : ' The 
kingdom of Hungary, ourselves, our children, our crown, all are 
at stake. Deserted by all besides, we throw ourselves on our 

' History of my own Times, c. iii. 



368 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1745. 

only refuge, on the loyalty of these illustrious states, on the 
proved valour of the Hungarian people.' Nor did she appeal in 
vain. Full of attachment to her sex, admiration for her courage, 
and gratitude for her confidence, the council rose as one man, 
clashing their swords, and declaring with enthusiastic shouts their 
-willingness to shed their life-blood in her cause, ' to die,' as they 
expressed it, ' for their King Maria Teresa.' 

Nor was their zeal confined to empty professions : they raised 
troops, they voted money ; but the Austrian discipline was no 
longer such as it had been in the days of Eugene : the com- 
manders, with the exception of Marshal Traun, Avere not such as 
to do credit to his teaching. And, though Frederic incurred one 
great disaster by a rash advance into Bohemia, from which the 
old marshal and Prince Charles of Lorraine, the queen's brother- 
in-law, drove him with the loss of half his army, the general 
course of the war proceeded so steadily in his favour, that, in the 
winter of 1745, Maria Teresa was compelled to sign a treaty, 
known as the peace of Dresden, by which she confirmed Frederic's 
possession of Silesia; while he recognised her husband as Em- 
peror. For the Elector of Bavaria who, on her father's death, had 
been elected Emperor, with the title of Gharles VII., had died in 
the preceding January ; and Francis of Lorraine had been elected 
as his successor, and had already been crowned at Frankfort. 

Unscrupulous and unprovoked as Frederic's hostility to the 
queen had been, it had gained his object : it had acquired for 
him a valuable province ; and it had made him famous. In little 
more than four years it had established the credit of the Prussian 
army, both infantry and cavalry, as second to no other force on the 
Continent : and his own reputation as deserving a place among 
the first of living generals. It had given him also the means of 
effecting more, through the admiration for himself with which it 
had inspired his subjects, who greeted his return to Berlin with 
enthusiastic acclamations, hailing him as ' Frederic the Great,' a 
title by which they have never ceased to speak of him. It was 
hardly possible that such success, not easily paralleled, if the 
shortness of the time in which it was achieved and his own pre- 
vious inexperience be considered, should not have excited in his 
mind a desire hereafter to eclipse it by still greater triumphs. 
But, if such an intention existed in his breast, he gave no sign of 
it beyond intrigues with the English Jacobites, as a punishment 
to George II. for the support which, before the close of the war, 
the unanimous voice of the people had compelled him to afibrd 
to the queen : and probably (though George was his uncle) as a 
means of eventually wresting from him the Electorate of Hanover, 
on which he had already cast a covetous eye j and for which, 



A.D. 1746.] FEEDEEIC'S DOMESTIC POLICY. 369 

after he had once pointed it out to Prussia as a prey to be desired, 
liis successors unremittingly laboured, till, after the law of in- 
heritance prevailing in the electorate had separated it from Eng- 
land, they found in its isolation an opportunity of seizing it, 
effecting by open violence what they had more than once sought to 
accomplish by treacherj^ ; expelling its sovereign with whom they 
had not even the pretence of a quarrel, and, by the mere law of 
strength, incorpoi-ating it with their own dominions. 

But in other quarters his conduct afforded no indication of any 
warlike purpose. He rather seemed contented to have sheathed 
his sword, and for several years devoted all his faculties to the 
internal improvement of his kingdom, showing a most judicious 
discernment in most of his measures, and erring only or chiefly in 
the adoption of the idea of which not unnaturally finds favour 
with absolute sovereigns, that he could direct and perform 
everything himself. It will be remembered that, on the death of 
Mazarin, Louis XIV. declared his intention to be for the future 
his own prime minister, and had shown an industry very rare in a 
king, in his endeavours to carry it out. In a somewhat similar 
spirit, when, on the death of Frederic William, his favourite 
ministers and generals besought their new master to suffer them 
to retain their offices, Frederic replied that he himself designed 
to be 'the King of Prussia's Field-Marshal and the King of 
Prussia's Finance Minister.' And, though during his absence 
-ndtli the army, it was impossible for him to act up to the declara- 
tion, from the first moment of the restoration of peace he applied 
himself to the performance of what he regarded as his duty with the 
most vigorous and untiring assiduity. He traversed his kingdom, 
examining the condition of every town and province with his own 
eyes : ordering the construction of fortifications, the establishment 
of manufactures, examining the state of the provincial as well as 
of the national finances. Even the administration of the law he 
took, to a certain extent, into his own hands, constituting himself 
a court of appeal from the decisions of the judges, and issuing an 
edict that every one, who had either a grievance to be redressed 
or a wish to be satisfied, should be at liberty to bring his com- 
plaint or his petition to himself. He put one limitation on this 
permission ; requiring that the petitioner's demands should never 
take up more space than one side of a sheet of paper ; but, pro- 
vided this condition were complied with, he read with his own 
eyes every document addressed to him ; paying equal attention 
to the most important and the most trivial matters, regulating 
with equal care the tax to be imposed on foreign manufactures 
and the salary to be paid to an actress by a theatrical manager. 

As a political economist, lie foiled : the same spirit, which 



370 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1746. 

induced him to undertake the duties of all the different depart- 
ments of government, led him also to confine to the crown many 
branches of trade which a more enlightened system leaves to 
private hands, trusting for their regulation to the natural laws of 
demand and supply. He judged that many trades rec[uired en- 
couragement, but the only encouragement which he could con- 
ceive effectual was to take them into his own hands : and on this 
principle he established one royal monopoly to promote the culti- 
vation of tobacco : the importation of coffee was made the sub- 
ject of another, and the most minute regulations were promul- 
gated with the sanction of the royal authority to define who 
might buy the berry raw and who must be content to purchase 
it ready roasted in royal tin cases. Some subjects he dealt with 
iii an enlightened spirit which seemed to prove him greatly in 
advance of his age. He established complete religious toleration 
in every part of his dominions ; and, though there is too great 
leason to believe that the mainspring of his conduct was not so 
much respect for, as contempt for and indifference to religious 
belief of any kind, the effect of his ordinance on the general tran- 
quillity of his kingdom was not the less beneficial. It was even 
more praiseworthy that he allowed his subjects the most perfect 
freedom in the expression of their opinions whether in conversa- 
tion or in writing. It was a liberty that they were by no means 
disposed to suffer to lie dormant : for there was hardly a month 
for many years that lampoons on his administration, libels on his 
motives, and caricatures of his person and of his actions were not 
published and circulated : the bitterest and worst of them did not 
endanger either author or publisher, nor apparently even bring him 
into the slightest disfavour. On one occasion, when the coffee mono- 
poly was new and specially unpopular, Frederic saw a crowd strain- 
ing their eyes to obtain a sight of a picture of himself, which por- 
trayed him with a coffee-mill between his knees grinding with one 
hand and picking up any berries which fell to the ground with 
the other, but which the billsticker had posted too high up on a 
blank wall to be distinctly seen. He ordered it to be shifted lower 
down that all might examine it with greater ease. He and his 
people, he said, had come to an understanding : he was to do what 
he pleased, and they were to say what they pleased : and his 
people were abundantly satisfied with a license so unusual from 
an arbitrary sovereign. 

More important still and more truly glorious than any of his 
achievements in war was his mitigation of the severity of the 
criminal law. Before his time extreme punishments were in un- 
diminished favour with all legislators. The number of crimes, to 
which death was awarded in England, was fearfully enormou.s : 



A.D. 1746.] HE MITIGATES THE SEVERITY OF THE LAW. 37 1 

while in Fiance criminals, as in the case of Damiens, could still 
be exposed to the most inhuman and revolting tortures. Frederic 
was the first ruler of a country vrho thought it more important to 
prevent than to punish offences ; and -who at the same time conceived 
the idea that the true method of prevention was to be found in 
diminishing the severity of the punishment, and especially in a 
more sparing resort to capital sentences. The result justified his 
anticipations. Before the end of his reign Prussia was more free 
from the more heinous crimes than perhaps any other country in 
Europe, and he had the pleasing reflection that, in humanising 
the laws, he had humanised the people also. 

Meritorious and valuable as these reforms were, they donotexhaust 
the list of Frederic's wise measures for the development of the re- 
sources of the country and the elevation of the character of the people. 
Marshes were drained, villages and towns were built in remote dis- 
tricts, and were peopled with settlers allured from foreign countries 
and skilful in foreign arts which he desired to naturalise in Prussia. 
Improvements in the cultivation of land and the breed of cattle 
were encouraged. Internal trade was facilitated by the construc- 
tion of roads and canals : foreign commerce by the improvement 
of the harbours in the Ealtic, and the establishment of a mercantile 
company to open a traffic with the East. While at the same 
time, to expand the minds of his subjects by elegant accomplish- 
ments, museums were established and enriched by choice collec- 
tions of antiquities and works of art purchased at a large price, 
and an academy of polite literature was founded and endowed, 
though, with a strange inconsistency, Maupertuis, a Frenchman, 
was appointed to preside over it, and, by the king's express order, 
all papers read before it were required to be written in French. 

These manifold cares and useful labours of peace did not, how- 
ever, for a moment divert his attention from his army. The very 
foundation of his indifference to lampoons and libels was the con- 
viction, which he had inherited from his father, that the sword 
was the only power worthy of serious consideration ; and a 
vigilant increasing superintendence of all that related to the 
organisation and discipline of the army was ever the task to which 
he applied himself with the greatest interest. 

To review his guards was one of his daily occupations, with 
ivhich, except when he was absent from Berlin, nothing was ever 
permitted to interfere. And the greatly-increased force, augmented 
beyond all proportion to the population of the country, and its 
conduct when again called to the field abundantly testified to the 
judgment exerted by him in all military details. But it is cha- 
racteristic of the view which he took of the unpardonable character 
of all violations of military duty that he introduced none of the 



372 MODEKN HISTORY. [a.d. 1746. 

reforms into his code of martial law ■whicli proved so beneficial in 
his administration of the common law. In the army the slightest 
offences were still punished with the most merciless rigour, no 
rank, reputation, nor past service, availed to procure the mitigation 
of a sentence. The slightest violation of the articles of war was 
visited with such inhuman floggings that the guilty soldier often 
entreated to he hanged as an indulgence ; executions were inflicted 
with fearful frequency ; and when war again broke out the slightest 
fiiilure or want of success in any operation was sure to bring on 
the unlucky officer to whose conduct it had been entrusted a 
deprivation of his rank and employment, perhaps even banishment 
from the country. The king's maxim appeared to be that it was 
only his reliance on the unflinching obedience of his troops that 
could enable him to treat the rest of his subjects with moderation 
and indulgence. 

Certainly nature had endowed Frederic in a singular degree 
with the qualities calculated to render his reign over an infant 
kingdom beneficial to all under his authority. Nor was he in- 
sensible to the greatness of his achievements, nor to the glory with 
which they would invest him in the eyes of posterity. Yet he 
scarcely coveted the fame of a victorious general, a wise legislator, 
an enlightened benefactor of his country more than literaiy re- 
putation, and, .above all, the fame of a poet, which nature was 
far from having placed within his reach. He did not indeed 

twine 
The hopes of being remembered in his line 
With his land's language."^ 

As he had proscribed German in his academy of literature, he 
never used it himself: indeed, he knew but little of it, not much 
more than would enable him to scold or gossip with his soldiers. 
But he was well read in the French literature of the last century, 
and predominant above almost all other feelings was his admira- 
tion for the living authors of France, and especially for Voltaire. 
After many efforts, he persuaded that celebrated wit and writer to 
visit Berlin, originally hoping to induce him to fix his permanent 
residence in his capital, and assigning him rooms in his own palace 
which he was to occupy with the most perfect freedom of move- 
ment. Unhappily, personal acquaintance destroyed the illusion. 
The only return which he expected for his condescension was that 
Voltaire should guide his studies and correct his poems. But 
Voltaire soon wearied of the task ; and, having tried in vain to 
render his performance of it equally distasteful to his pupil by the 
severity of his criticisms, which Frederic accepted with rare 

1 Childe Harold, iv. 9. 



A.D. 1756.] VOLTAIEE'S VISIT TO EEELIN. 373 

docility, lie vented his disappointment in ridicule of the king's 
generjil abilities and character. Selecting for his confidants those 
who, he might have been sure, would circulate his sarcasms, he 
was wont to denounce Frederic as a combination of drill-sergeant 
and pedant. Frederic, with more reason, pronounced him mad, and 
ordered one of the satires which he had ventured to publish to be 
burned by the common executioner. Voltaire returned to Switzer- 
land ; and at that safe distance reproached Frederic as one ' who 
disgraced the name of philosopher, and, by his caprices, gave 
some colour to the reproaches of bigots, when they said that 
neither justice nor humanity could be expected from those who 
rejected Christianity.' For one bond of union between the two 
had been their common profession of infidelity. Frederic was 
equally ready with hard language, and wrote back that * Voltaire 
was a rogue who deserved a jail; that his talents were not more 
widely known than his dishonesty and malignity. And that he 
was fortunate in having to deal with one who pardoned his base- 
ness out of his indulgence to his genius.' 

From these miserable squabbles Frederic was suddenly called off 
by a fresh war. He was far better prepared for it than he had 
been before. Since the peace of Dresden Prussia had greatly 
advanced in prosperity and in power. ' His army was nearly 
doubled ; his revenue was more than doubled. And, in 1756, he 
was able to contemplate withput uneasiness the appearances of 
war which the movements of more states than one seemed to 
present, when he unexpectedly found that he was not to be 
allowed the option of remaining neutral, nor even of deciding 
which side he would take in the event of any general commotion, 
but that he himself had been selected as the mark for the hostility 
of all his neighbours. 

We may certainly look on it as a continuation of the good for- 
tune which had hitherto attended him, that war, when he did 
again engage in it, was forced upon him ; and, instead, like his 
Silesian campaigns, of being stamped with the character of wanton 
aggression on his part, was a war of self-defence against enemies 
from whom, of all nations, he believed himself to have the least 
reason to apprehend hostility. Austria he regarded as, though 
discontented at the result of the former war, nevertheless appeased 
by the elevation of Francis to the throne of the Csesars. France 
had been his ally in that war ; and was, moreover, separated from 
the Empire by a century and a half of unvarying enmity. With 
Russia and Saxony he had no cause of quarrel whatever. But 
Maria Teresa had never forgotten the loss of Silesia, nor lost 
Bight of the possibility of one day recovering it ; and the talents 
and craft of her diplomatists enabled her to turn the French 



374 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1756. 

monarch also against him. During the last ten years of peace, 
the increase in the resources of her kingdom had fully kept pace 
with the improvement of Prussia. She had been so fortunate and 
so judicious as to discern the abilities of one of her diplomatic 
servants, the Baron Kaunitz, her ambassador at Paris, and to place 
him at the head of her administration. His subtle genius, 
sharpened by the insight which, in his diplomatic career, he had 
acquired into the views of the different foreign cabinets, had 
formed a plan which he imagined likely to lead to the gratifica- 
tion of what he well knew to be the dearest wish of his mistress : 
and he was materially aided by the imprudence of Frederic him- 
self. To his passion for becoming a poet, Frederic united the 
desire of being considered a wit ; and had specially selected other 
sovereigns of tastes different from his own as the butts for his 
jests. In his eyes and that of many other judges of etiquette of 
courts, Louis XV. had inflicted a deeper wound on his royal 
dignity than any which had been dealt by the worst profligacy of 
his predecessors, by selecting his reigning mistress from a class 
not entitled to such a distinction. Madame de Pompadour was 
the daughter of a butcher. The reigning Empress of Russia, 
Elizabeth, was as shamelessly licentious as Louis, and as little 
inclined as he to confine her favours to those whose noble birth 
was held necessary to j ustify her choice. Frederic spared neither 
king nor empress; he named one of his dogs Pompadour, and 
proclaimed her better bred and better behaved than her namesake 
belonging to his brother of France ; and at his reviews he would 
point out some specially handsome trooper, and announce his in- 
tention of sending him as ambassador to St. Petersburg. Pie 
knew much, but he had still to learn that success and scorn often 
cause deeper resentment and are less easily forgiven than actual 
injuries. Russia was easily secured as an ally for the empress- 
queen. To gain France was a harder task, for Kaunitz had to 
overcome the disdain which his pure and high-minded sovereign 
felt for the French court and for the worthless woman who ruled 
it, and without whose aid no impression could be made on Louis. 
But the recovery of Silesia was an object paramount to all other 
considerations ; and Maria Teresa consented to forget her sense of 
royal dignity, her matronly purity, and her loathing of vice, and 
to write letters in the language of courtesy and even respect to 
the low-born, worthless woman who could secure her the French 
alliance, and, with it, as she doubted not, the recovery of the 
province which had been iniquitously wrested from her. She 
called Madame de Pompadour * princess,' ' cousin,' * her dear 
sister,' as if she had been writing to Louis's lawful queen. It 
happened that just at the same moment the French ministers 



A.i>. 1756.] THE SEVEN YEAliS' WAR. 375 

learnt that Frederic was negotiating a treaty with England, which, 
in their view, could only indicate ill-will to their own country. 
And political jealousies thus coinciding with personal pique and 
female caprice, both cabinet and court came into Kaunitz's views ; 
and, in May 1756, an offensive and defensive treaty was signed 
between the two countries. Poland and Saxony joined the alli- 
ance ; and Frederic was left with no support, but that of England to 
confront the whole Continent in arms.^ Nor was the aid of Eng- 
land of any material service to him. She was almost wholly 
occupied with retaliating on France for the loss of Minorca, by 
conquests in America, by triumphs in India, by insulting her 
whole coast from Calais to Bayonne ; and, though she did also 
send a force to combat the French in quarters where their success 
would have imperilled Hanover, no British regiments joined the 
armies on the Elbe or the Oder. So desperate to Frederic himself 
did the contest appear, that among the provision which he made 
for it was a dose of poison which he constantly kept in his pocket, 
resolved to take it rather than become a prisoner to his enemies. 
Yet, from thi« contest which he had such reason to regard as 
hopeless, he came forth not only with no diminution of territory 
or power, but with a large increase of personal reputation. Not, 
indeed, without exposing his people to frightful miseries, nor 
without himself suffering severe disasters and defeats which, if 
they had not been repaired by subsequent triumphs, might almost 
be called ignominious. For Frederic was no invincible general, 
like Marlborough and Wellington ; and though Napoleon, in a 
discussion of the talents of the great masters of war, on one occa- 
sion assigned him the palm among the warriors of modern Europe, 
while passing over the great British commanders almost without 
notice, his praise of him may well be set down to that habitual 
want of candour which was one of the meanest faults of that extra- 
ordinary man. Napoleon could not bring himself to allow any merit 
to a citizen of the nation which alone was checking his progress, 
and which, as he must often have felt misgivings, was already 
shaking and was destined to overthrow his power. He could afford 
to compliment the ptist achievements of a people he had struck 
down and which was lying helpless at his feet. Perhaps he even 
hoped to encourage his hearers and to blind himself by affirming the 

1 It is remarkable that, in the tories on the frontier of the Nether- 
treaty which Kaunitz tlius con- lands ; so early had the idea of com- 
cluded with France, it was stipu- pensations, at the expense of neutral 
lated that, if Austria should recover and weak states, which the present 
Silesia, her increase of power in that generation has seen cost their coun- 
diiection should be counterbalanced ' try so dear, entered into the mind of 
by France being permitted to mak« French statesmen, 
corresponding additions to her terri- 



376 MODEKN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1757. 

superiority of the Prussians whom he had conquered to the 
Britons, against whom all his efforts by land as well as by sea had 
hitherto been productive of nothing but discomfiture. But history 
judges differently. She does not indeed deny to Frederic the 
praise of a great general : nor refuse to set Hohenfriedberg, Ros- 
bach, and Leuthen against Kolin, Hochkirch, and Kunersdof j 
jxnd to admit that the orginality. of his mode of handling his 
troops ; the skill with which he concealed his designs from his 
antagonists, thus often making up for that inferiority in numerical 
force which was a difficulty attending, him throughout the war ; 
the irresistible energy of his attack ; the indomitable tenacity of 
his resistance, were qualities in which he has rarely been sur- 
passed. But, far from pronouncing him the equal of Marlborough, 
Wellington, or Napoleon himself, she may fairly doubt whether 
he was not surpassed in skill by his own contemporary Saxe ; and 
will rather rank him with Coude or Peterborough than with 
Luxembourg or Turenne. 

One of the fruits of his rapidity of decision both political and 
military was that, though his enemies had planned and prepared 
the war, he was first in the field and struck the first blow. It 
was not till the last week in August that his envoys reported that 
the cabinet of Vienna had shown by its language that war was 
inevitable. The very day after their despatches reached Berlin, 
he left it to put himself at the head of his army, and opened the 
campaign, at once penetrating into Saxony ; blockading the Saxon 
army in Pirna, near Dresden ; beating back on the first of October 
the Austrian Marshal Browne, who had hastened to relieve it, and 
finally compelling the Saxons to surrender, and incorporating the 
greater portion of their force in his own army. And in the 
next campaign he again assumed the offensive, invading Bohemia, 
and pushing on with great celerity to Prague ; but no longer 
meeting with the same good fortune that had rewarded his first 
efforts. He did, indeed, gain a nominal victory over Prince Charles 
of Lorraine, brother-in-law of the empress, and commander-in- 
chief of the Austrians, under the walls of the city : nominal it 
may be called, because the loss on both sides w:as nearly equal ; 
and still more, because, as he was in a foreign country and the 
Austrians were in their own, they could repair the chasms made 
in their ranks more readily than he. For Frederic had committed 
the same error which had ruined Charles of Sweden in the cam- 
paign of Pultava, and was to ruin a still greater commander than 
either in a subsequent age, he had advanced too far from his 
resources ; and he was soon to learn that no error is more fatal. 
His very victory, .such as it was, was injurious to him, by fixing 
him in his resolution not to reliuquisii his hold on tlie Bohemian 



A.D. 1768.] THE BATTLE OF KOLIN. 377 

capital, Tvliicli he made sure of soon compelling to surrender, 
thougli Prince Charles with the remainder of his army had throvru 
himself into it. And in this hope he persevered in the siege, 
without receiving any reinforcements, while a fresh army, under 
Marshal Daun, the most renowned of all the Austrian commanders, 
was hastening from Vienna to relieve it. 

So vigorous had heen the exertions of the Imperial govern- 
ment, and so rapid the movements of Daun, that, within six 
weeks after the battle of Prague, Frederic learnt that the Marshal 
had reached Kolin, a town at no great distance from his camp, 
with 50,000 men ; and that his only chance to avoid being entirely 
overwhelmed lay in scattering that army before it should be joined 
by others. It is by no means strange that the same ground should 
have been a battlefield in successive ages ; the unchanging con- 
formation of the ground, the course of rivers, the importance of 
cities and fortresses naturally make the same positions of import- 
ance in different wars. But it is very remarkable how often the 
same day has heard the din of battle in different ages. Above 
300 years before, the eighteenth of June had seen the English 
prospects of retaining the sovereignty of France dissipated in the 
shameful rout of Patay ; on the same eig;hteenth of June English and 
Prussianswere destined hereafter to raise acommon shout of triumph 
over the final overthrow of the most formidable enemy that either 
country had ever encountered ; and now on the same day Frederic 
was to learn that the best founded reliance on his own skiU and ou 
the faithful stubborness of his soldiers will not j ustify a general in 
neglecting the ordinary rules of military prudence. I say nothing 
of his fancied superiority in tactical skill, because, in fact, in this 
battle he was so far from displaying it, that his defeat is mainly 
attributable to his originally injudicious choice of a position, and 
to his subsequent error in altering his dispositions in the middle 
of the action.^ He himself, in his Memoirs, frankly admits his 
want of judgment ; and that the success of the Austrians was so 
decided that had Daun known as well how to improve a victory 
as to win one, and had he passed on at once to Prague, where a 
strong Prussian division had been left to maintain the investment, 
the consequences of the defeat would have been more serious than 
the defeat itself. On the other hand, all admit, what he forbears 
to boast, that, if the most heroic courage and the most splendid 
exertions could have retrieved such faults as he had committed, 
he would have retrieved them. The Saxon cavalry was more 

1 He admits himself, in his His- tains ; ' and that ' Marshal Daun 

tnry of the Seven Years' War, c. 6, had the power to turn his right when 

that 'his position was bad : his camp he pleased.' — Holcroft's Translation, 
narrow, shut up between moun- 



378 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1758. 

numerous than his own ; and, burning to avenge the disaster of 
their countrymen in the previous year, they attacked the Prussian 
infantry in front and rear, carrying everything before them and 
giving no quarter ; while the Austrian artillery, which was also 
superior in strength to the Prussian batteries, swept the field with 
terrible effect. Soon Frederic's sole hope lay in his own cavalry : 
he put himself at their head, and six times led them on in person 
to the charge, though at every onset these numbers were fearfully 
thinned by the enemy's cannon. He tried to rally the broken 
squadrons for a seventh charge on the batteries themselves, but 
they could form no longer. ' Do you want to live for ever ? ' said 
he, in bitter reproach. For that seventh charge he could not 
collect forty men : when they came within range of the fatal 
grapeshot, the bulk of them quailed before it, and fled ; and still 
he was galloping on till a Scotch aide-de-camp, named Grant, asked 
him if they two were to take the batteries by themselves. Pie 
checked his charger: saw that he was unsupported by even a 
single trooper, and, after taking a steady survey of the enemy's 
lines with his glass, rode slowly from the field. 

His loss had been very great. He reckons it himself at nearly 
14,000 men, and the conquerors had also taken most of his guns ; 
but he was not a man to let one disaster, however considerable, 
break his spirit or end a war. Yet, at first, it seemed as if Kolin 
were but the beginning of the end. A few weeks later Prussia was 
invaded on the north-eastern side by a Russian army ; an Austrian 
division, pushing up from the south, appeared under the walls of 
Berlin, and compelled the capital to pay a heavyransom to save itself 
from assault ; on the north-west two large French armies, imder 
the Duke de Hichelieu and the Prince de Soubise, cut him off 
from all prospect of assistance from the English and Hanoverians ; 
while he himself, having retreated into Saxony after Kolin, to 
recruit his shattered forces, was lying, as it were, in the midst 
of the hostile armies, every one of which more than doubled the 
utmost force that he could hope to assemble. For a moment 
he did despair ; and even announced to Voltaire, with whom he 
kept up a constant correspondence, his resolution to seek in death 
a relief from his troubles ; but Voltaire thought such an idea 
unworthy of ' the Solomon of the North ; ' ^ urged him to remem- 
ber that such an act would only give an additional triumph to 
his enemies ; that, even should he be stripped of all his dominions, 
' a philosopher could live without domains ; ' and asked him 
whether ' it was worth the trouble he had taken to become a 
philosopher, if, though a king, he could not support adversity ? ' 

1 See his letter to Frederic, Oct. 1757, Vol. vii. p. 414 of Holcroft's 
edition. 



A.D. 1758.] THE BATTLE OF EOSBACH. 379 

And, in truth, despair was a feeling too foreign to his own nature 
to be long entertained. It was far more characteristic of his real 
disposition, that he presently began to tranquillise his feelings by- 
writing verses. ' Man,' he replied to his tutor's warning voice, 

Man was I born, and therefore must oppose 
My fortitude to man's eternal foes. 

Being what I am, 'tis fit, 
Though on the rocks the vessel split, 
Though howling storms destruction bring, 
To act, and think, and live, and die a king.^ 

And, within a month of the date of this effusion, he had begun 
to give the enemies who thought to overwhelm him terrible proof 
how undiminished were hia energy and his resources ; if it may 
not even be said that the momentary relaxation of his nerves had 
given them additional tension and vigour when they recovered 
from the blow. He turned first upon the French : bribing Riche- 
lieu, the most profligate and rapacious of men, into inactivity, 
while he marched against Soubise, who was advancing through 
Saxony, and had already reached Erfurt. On the fifth of November 
the two armies met at Eosbach, a smalltown on the Saale,not far 
from Leipsic : the French had 60,000 men, the Prussians 22,000, 
but it would be a misnomer to call the events of the day a battle. 
Frederic's manoeuvres were unusually skilful; Soubise had no 
skill, nor even much courage ; of confidence he had more than 
enough. When, on the previous evening, he had learned that 
Frederic's handful of men were within reach of his overpowering 
host, he sent off a courier to Paris to announce the certainty that 
on the morrow he should make prisoners of the king and all his 
army. The next morning, the moment that he was attacked, he 
was seized with a panic that communicated itself to his whole 
force. Two regiments of Austrian cavalry, with two or three 
of his own squadrons, made a momentary stand, but, isolated by 
the flight of their comrades, they were easily overpowered and 
destroyed ; and the rest of the army fled without striking a blow. 
Frederic scarcely lost 500 men ; but he surpassed even this 
brilliant exploit before the end of the year. A few days after- 
wards bad news reached him from Silesia, where Charles of Lor- 
raine had beaten a strong Prussian force, and captured Breslau; 
without a moment's delay, Frederic hastened to check the progress 
of the conqueror, marching with such speed that exactly a month 
after Rosbach he came in front of the Austrian position at Lissa 

1 Frederic's answer to Voltaire, the less faithful for its want of 
Oct. 9, 1757. lb. p. 418. Mr. IIol- poetic merit. I have not been able 
croft's translation is probably not to meet with the original. 



380 MODEKN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1758. 

and Leuthen, villages a few miles to the west of tlie Silesian 
capital. He had picked up the relics of the beaten division on his 
way : so that he had now between 30,000 and 40,000 men under 
his command ; but Prince Charles had 60,000 and a position so 
strong that, if he could have been contented with holding it, as 
the moi-e experienced and prudent plan recommended, the king 
would only have been hurrying to his destruction. But the young 
prince was elated with the victory which he had already gained, 
and listened rather to the hot-headed counsels of some of his staff 
who derided the weakness of the Prussian battalions, and urged 
that it would be unworthy of his courage to wait to receive the 
attack from so unequal a foe. Frederic was equally aware of his 
inequality in numbers j but one of his maxims was, that 'the 
capacity and fortitude of the general are in war more decisive 
than the number of his troops.' And he had learned something 
from the battles he had already fought against the Austrians, and 
even from his own recent defeat. After carefully reconnoitring the 
enemy's position, he prepared a plan of attack which should 
' bring his whole army on the left flank of the Imperialists,' and 
' avoid the faults which had caused the loss of the battle of Kolin," 
and he hoped to teach the Austrians that caution would have been 
a more useful lesson for themselves to have learned than overconfi- 
dence. The importance of the coming battle was so vital to his 
whole kingdom, that before the onset he took means to which 
he never before had had recourse to encourage his army. He 
summoned his generals and principal officers around him, and in 
a brief and energetic speech roused them to the eiforts which he 
expected of them by reminding them of the glory they had already 
won. It was only that day month that, with still greater odds 
against them, they had routed the French at Eosbach. His own 
determination was to conquer or die ; and he was confident that 
they were inspired with the same resolution. Pie dismissed them, 
bidding them speak to their soldiers as he had spoken to Ihem ; 
and, without further delay, began his operations. Prince Charles 
and Daun handled their troops with no inconsiderable skill ; but 
Frederic's fertility of design and rapidity of execution were on this 
great day far superior to theirs. The Austrian soldiers, both in- 
fantry and cavalry, showed themselves worthy of their leaders, 
but all that they could do was to protract the conflict till night, 
under cover of which the generals were able to rally and draw o£E 
the remnant of their army. For it was but a remnant : they had 
lost 10,000 killed and wounded, and above 20,000 prisoners, with 
more than 100 guns. Nor was this the whole extent of their 
calamity, for two days afterwards Breslau, which was held by au 
' Memoirs of the Seven Years' Wnr, c. 6. 



A.D. 1759.] THE BATTLE OF KUNEESDOF. 381 

Austrian garrison of nearly 20,000 men more, surrendered ; ■while 
the Prussian loss, though severe, was trifling in comparison of 
fiuch enormous successes. 

After such great achievements on each side as distinguish this 
the first year of the war all subsequent events seem tame. Yet 
still year after year saw fresh conflicts with chequered results, but 
all marked with tremendous slaughter. If Frederic beat the 
Russians at Zorndof, a few weeks afterwards Daun did more than 
avenge them at Hochkirch.^ And in August, 1759, the Austrians 
and Russians combined dealt Frederic a blow at Kuuersdof* which 
counterbalanced that of Leuthen itself, and which must have been 
the more painful that he brought the defeat on himself by blunders 
worse than he had committed at Kolin. Though greatly inferior 
in numbers, in the earlier part of the day he had gained such ad- 
vantages over the Russian division, that he despatched a courier 
to Berlin to announce his victory ; but he prolonged the attack, in 
the hope of annihilating his enemies, so long that, he gave the Aus- 
trian commander, Loudon, who on this day displayed consummate 
skill and presence of mind, time to bring up his reserve, and in a 
moment all was changed. The Prussians were overpowered, and 
soon utterly routed ; Frederic himself was slightly wounded, and 
only escaped capture by the gallant exertions of a captain of 
hussars. During the latter part of the day he exposed himself 
with such rashness, that it seems probable that he did not desire 
to survive his defeat ; but at last he was prevailed on to retreat, 
and sent oS a fresh despatch ordering that the royal family should 
quit Berlin ; that the archives should be removed, and authoris- 
ing the magistrates of the city to make terms with the enemy. 

Now for a moment he seriously resolved to destroy himself; he 
declared his brother Henry generalissimo of the army : prepared 
orders that he and the troops should take the oaths of allegiance 
to his nephew (for he had no children) : and, had the conquerors 
followed up their victory, there is little doubt that he would have 
executed his design. He was saved by a jealousy which sprang 
up between the Austrian and Russian generals, arising out of the 
very circumstances of their victory. The loss had fallen on the 
Russians, the glory had been reaped by the Austrians, and Prince 
Soltikoff, the Russian commander, was not inclined to take any 
step which, even if it should lead to the capture of Frederic him- 
self, which Loudon strongly urged could not fail to be the fruit 
of an energetic pursuit, would tend to the glory of his colleague, 
whom he looked upon as his rival, rather than to his oven. 

Thus once more Frederic obtained a respite ; and, after a few 

1 Zoradof, AuETust 25, 1758. Ilochkirch, October 13. 
« August 12, i759. 



382 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1763; 

dajs recovered from his despondency : once more he recruited bis 
army, and still the war went on, the preponderance of success 
being, on the whole, in favour of his enemies. If he gained a 
victory in the open field, they took Berlin; but still his resolution 
was unabated. His treasury was exhausted ; the population was 
no longer equal to the continued di"ain upon it : but he treated his 
own kingdom as if it had been a hostile country ; cutting down the 
■woods, seizing the corn and cattle, and exacting enormous taxes ; 
till even the peasants, who were necessary to till the ground, were 
forced to enlist in the army, as their sole refuge from starvation. 
And thus, in the last campaigns he more than once found himself 
at the head of armies stronger in number, if weaker in discipline, 
than those which he had led at the beginning of the war. For- 
tune, too, began to favour him. The changes in the British 
ministry, which were the result of the death of George II., and 
which led to peace between England and France, relieved him 
from the hostility of the French, At the end of 1761 the Empress 
of Russia died, and her death changed the policy of that Empire 
also ; and, while Austria was thus losing her allies, the Turks, 
tempted to a renewal of their old designs by a belief in her ex- 
haustion, began to menace her Hungarian frontier. Mediators 
were not wanting ; and in February 1763, the Peace of Huberts^ 
burg left all parties in the same position as when they had begun 
the war. Frederic evacuated Saxony, which he had held almost 
from its commencement ; but he was allowed to retain Silesia, to 
wrest which from him had been the original object of the great 
confederacy against him. 

To have preserved it was a great triumph for himself, but it 
was one which had been dearly purchased by his nation. Never 
in any country had war left such fearful traces ; trade and agri- 
culture were alike ruined ; large tracts of land lay uncultivated ; 
the very seed corn had been consumed ; the flocks and herds of 
entire districts had been swept away ; the decrease of the popula- 
tion was still more grievous. Its entire amount at the commence- 
ment of the war is not estimated at more than 2,500,000 : and it 
is computed that during it one-sixth of all the men in the kingdom 
capable of bearing arms had perished in the field of battle ; while 
the ravages made by famine and disease had been even more terrible 
and more universal than those of the sword. 

To repair these evils was the chief task of the remainder of 
Frederic's life. And it was well for Prussia that he was spared 
to it for nearly a quarter of a century. For it is in the prosperity 
of his country as he left it at his death, when compared with the 
luiiversal misery which pervaded it at the end of this war which, 
it must be remembered, had been forced upon him, that his real 



A.i>. 1786J DEATH OF FEEDERIC. 383 

glory is to be found ; far more than in the mancBuvres of Leuthen, 
or the fiery charges of Zorndof or Rosbach. 

We shall have occasion to recur to his foreign policy in a 
subsequent chapter; -without entering here into the details of his 
domestic administration, it is sufficient to say that at his death, in 
1786, he left Prussia flourishing in everything (except, indeed, a 
free constitution) which can make a people happy at home and 
respected abroad. The taxes were not burdensome, yet a large 
fund was accumulated in the treasury for future emergencies. 
Trade was greatly developed ; agriculture was improved. As a 
military power, an army of 200,000 men, admirably disciplined, 
placed him on a level with the mightiest of his neighbours. These 
were the results for which the generation which saw him descend 
to the grave, admired, and honoured, and loved him : though he 
himself would have denied that they entitled him to any excess of 
gratitude on their part. In his own words, as magnanimous as 
ever flowed from royal lips, ' To relieve the distresses and promote 
the happiness of his subjects was his duty ; it was lor that that he 
was a king.'^ 

^ The chief authorities for this The Memoirs of the Margravine of 

chapter have been : Ranke's //fstory Bnyreuth, Lord Dover's and Mr. 

of Prussia, Coxe's House of Austria, Carlyle's Lives of Frederic 11.^/ 

trederic the Greats Own Memoirs, &c. &c. 



384 MODERN HISTOEY. [kJi. 1715. 



CHAPTER XVII. 
A.D. 1715 — 1774. 

IN the last chapter we have twice made mention of France ; 
first, as taking part with Prussia against Austria in the Silesiau 
war ; and, a few years afterwards, as combining with Austria 
against Prussia in the Seven Years' War. And this vacillation 
of policy, viewed in connection with the motives which led to it, 
is but a specimen of the utter want of fixed principle, and a type 
of the weakness that gradually overspread the whole kingdom 
during the reign of Louis XV. There is no reign in which the 
vices of the rulers have had a more visible effect in corrupting the 
character, sapping the energies and spirit of a people, and con- 
sequently diminishing its power, and with that, its reputation and 
influence among foreign nations. And the historian would gladly 
pass it by with averted eyes, were it not that it had so great and 
manifest a share in bringing on, or at least accelerating, the Kevolu- 
tion which, before the end of the century, swept away all the 
ancient institutions of the country, not sparing even the throne of 
the king or the temple of the Almighty ; that some survey, as 
brief as may be, of the chief events, and still more of the characters 
imd conduct of those who at different periods had the principal in- 
fluence over the affairs of the state, or the minds of the people, is 
indispensable to the correct understanding of those fearful events, or 
series of events, which are known by that ill-omened name. 

For the first infamies of his reign the king himself was not 
accountable. He was but a child ; and the chief power was in 
the hands of his cousin, the Duke of Orleans, as regent : a man, if 
abilities alone are to be considered, not unfit for the office, though 
tlie state of absolute bankruptcy in which Louis XIV. had left the 
kingdom had surrounded his discharge of its duties with unusual 
difficulties ; but of a chai-acter so utterly abandoned that he had 
even lost all respect for virtue in others. He lived in notorious 
incest with his own daughter, and the two nightly polluted the 
royal palace with orgies such as had never been seen since the days 
of the Borgias : while his knowledge that his former tutor, Dubois, 
was as vicious as himself did not prevent him from making him an 



A.D. 1723.] FLEURY BECOMES PRIME MINISTER. 385 

archbishop and prime minister, and exerting his influence at E,ome 
to obtain for him a cardinal's hat. The regent did not even 
escape the imputation of personal dishonesty in pecuniary matters. 
The zeal which he showed to uphold the credit of Law's Missis- 
sippi Company, which brought such widespread ruin on the nation, 
was stimulated by the deep interest which the amount of his 
own speculations in the bubble had given him in its success : and, in 
the judgment of his own most honest friend, St.-Simon, the whole 
transaction, of which his share in it was the most damaging inci- 
dent, contributed no little to lay the foundation of that general con- 
tempt and hatred with which people began to regard the whole 
system of government. 

D'Orleans died in 1723, worn out by his excesses, though 
scarcely forty years of age. He had already ceased to be regent, 
since Louis had reached his thirteenth birthday, on which, under 
the old constitution, a French king attained his legal majority, a 
few months before; but he had latterly been prime minister, 
Dubois having also died in the course of the summer ; and his 
successor in that office, the Duke de Bourbon, was as profligate 
and worthless as he, without the abilities which had enabled him 
in some points, and especially in the department of foreign policy, to 
render good service to the kingdom, and without the grace and 
courtesy which had veiled his disorders from superficial observers. 
In less than three years Bourbon was dismissed and banished from 
the court ; and was succeeded by Fleury, Bishop of Frejus, better 
known by his title of cardinal, which he obtained a few weeks 
afterwards, whose administration is the one bright spot in the 
reign. Not from his talents for diplomacy or war, for he was not 
endowed with any brilliant abilities, and still less was he in- 
fluenced by any lust of acquisition, but from the purity of his 
personal character, his incorruptible integrity, and his steady 
adherence to the maintenance of peace and economy as the lead- 
ing principles of his administration. He had been almoner to 
Louis XIV., and having won his goodwill by his tact and courtly 
address, and having conciliated the favour of Madame de Maintenon 
by his opposition to the Jansenists, he had been appointed tutor to 
the little Dauphin, and had thus acquired an influence over him 
which ended only with his own life. He might have succeeded 
Orleans three years before, as the Duke de St.-Simon strongly 
recommended, but he was unwilling to place himself in so pro- 
minent a post as that of prime minister while the king was still 
a minor, insisting that, till Louis should come of age, no one but 
a prince of the blood could discharge its duties with sufficient 
iiuthority ; and it was in deference to his advice that the Duke de 
18 



386 MODERN HISTORY. [a.b. 1727. 

Bourbon had been selected. It was, again, tbrougb his influence 
that the duke was dismissed when he found not only that that 
prince had become unpopular with every class of the people, but 
that he regarded himself with jealousy and ill-will. And, when he 
now at last consented to accept the vacant office, his promotion 
was hailed with general joy. 

No contrast was ever greater than that which is presented by the 
character of the new minister and the authority which he exerted. 
He was seventy-three years of age ; he had always been a man of 
simple manners, gentle and unassuming temper ; and, as has been 
already said, he was not endowed with commanding abilities of 
any kind. Yet he not only retained office for the whole of his life, 
which was prolonged for nearly seventeen more years, but he 
exercised its powers with as complete an absoluteness of au- 
thority as Louis XIV. himself had ever enjoyed.^ While he pre- 
sided at the council board the other ministers were compelled to 
stifle their mutual jealousies, and even to take his orders for the 
regulation of their own departments, in which they were reduced 
to a position little higher than that of clerks. And, in the condi- 
tion in which he found the country when he assumed the reins, it 
was well that they should be so. It is true, as has often been 
alleged, that he was not, indeed he never had been, a man of 
great energy. But his very want of vigour was eminently service- 
able to his country in her existing state : for he had good plain 
sense, and, in matters of importance, sufficient firmness. As has 
been already mentioned, Louis XIV. had left the finances of the 
kingdom in a condition of such apparently hopeless exhaustion that 
some of the regent's advisers had recommended the convocation 
of the states-general for the purpose of making a formal declara- 
tion of national bankruptcy. The measures adopted by the 
regent to avoid that disgraceful expedient, the debasement of the 
coinage, t)ie enforced forfeiture of a large portion of the national 
debt, were not less disgraceful, and hardlj' less mischievous : 
while under rulers such as Orleans and Bourbon there was little 
chance of affairs being relieved by any judicious economy. The 
government, therefore, was still as insolvent as ever when Fleury 
took the helm ; but its embarrassments did not dismay him. He 
knew exactly what the country wanted ; and he resolved that 
no discontent or clamour of factious courtiers should prevent him 
from giving it to her. 

He had faith in the national resources of the country itself, pro- 
vided she were allowed time to develope themj provided iheir 

1 'Jamais roi tie France, non pas e'loignee de toule contradiction,' &c. 
meme Louis XIV, n'a regne d'une — St.-Simon, vol. xvi. c. 20. 
maiiifere si absolue, si sure, si 



A.D. 1737.] WAR IN ITALY. 387 

growth -were not checked by foreign war, nor their fruits wasted 
by domestic prodigality. The maintenance of peace abroad, there- 
fore, and of an economy at home, in which, however, there should 
be nothing mean or undignified, were the cardinal principles of his 
administration. From his trust in them he never swerved. And 
so great and so speedy was the advantage which France reaped 
from his sagacious government, that, before he had been eight 
years minister, the great Eugene, than whom no man living had 
enjoyed better opportunities of justly estimating the French power 
and character, warned the Viennese cabinet to avoid engaging in 
war with France. ' That country,' he assured them, ' had never 
been stronger ; her finances were re-established in a thoroughly 
healthy state, and she was under a prudent and vigorous ad- 
ministration.' ^ 

Yet, in spite of Fleury's sincere love of peace, he was twice 
drawn into war with the Empire before the close of his admin- 
istration. Once through a quarrel, which arose partly out of 
the support which the government of Charles VI., in spite of the 
warnings of Eugene, resolved on giving to the party which, on the 
death of Augustus the Strong, endeavoured to prevent the restora- 
tion to the Polish throne of Stanislaus Leczinski, who, as we have 
seen in a previous chapter, had been involved in the disasters 
which Pultava wrought on his ally Charles XII., but whose 
daughter had since become the wife of king Louis ; and partly out 
of some old engagements which had long subsisted between the 
French and Sardinian kings, and which had bound France, at a 
convenient season, to aid in wresting the Milanese from the House 
of Austria. And a second time, as we have already seen, as an ally of 
Prussia in the Silesian war. The first war was marked by one or 
two events of military importance : by the death of the Duke of 
Berwick, who was killed in the trenches while besieging Philips- 
burg, thus meeting with a death which equally excited the envy 
of his brother marshal, the veteran Villars, and of his antagonist 
Eugene ; ^ and by the bloody battles of the Secchia and of Gua- 
stalla. In the first the French were victorious, in consequence of 
the death of the Austrian general, the Count de Mercy, who, like 
his great-grandfather at Nordliugen, had almost secured the victory 
when he was struck down by a cannon ball ; while a similar acci- 
dent, the deaths of two of the principal Austrian generals, the 
Princes of Waldeck and Wurtemburg, enabled the French to 
represent the second also as having terminated in their favour, 

' Memoires du prince Eugene, an. ete heureux.' — Lacretelle,i\.lo5. And 

1738, p. 1G4. Eugene saj^s, ' .J'en fus jaloux, et 

- Villars remarked, on hearing of c'est la premiere fois de ma vie que 

his death, ' Get homme-1^ a toujours je I'ai e'te.' — Memoires, p. 1G8. 



388 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1737. 

since, though they lost some thousands of prisoners, they kept 
possession of the field. And it was still more memorable in its 
political results, since it enabled the cardinal to acquire for 
France a territory for which Richelieu and Louvois had striven in 
vain. Scarcely any treaty in modern history had led to such an 
extensive rearrangement of territories as the peace concluded at 
Vienna in the autumn of 1738. . Naples and Sicily were ceded by 
the Emperor to a Spanish Infante, who had previously been 
accepted by the last of the Medici as the heir to the Duchy of 
Tuscany ; Tuscany thus, as it were, vacant, was exchanged for 
Lorraine with Duke Francis, who was just about to marry Maria 
Teresa ; and Stanislaus gave up his claim on Poland for the present 
possession of Lorraine, the reversion of which was at the same time 
settled on his daughter, the Queen of France, as her dowry. He 
lived, indeed, to enjoy his new dominions for more than thirty 
years ; but France could w^ell aiford to wait now that she had 
secured the eventual possession of so rich an inheritance ; one of 
such value both in time of peace and war that subsequent French 
historians have not hesitated to class the dower which Maria Lec- 
zinski thus brought to her husband with the inheritance of Eleanor 
of Guienne, or of Anne of Brittany, and to compare the treaty by 
which it was secured to that of Nimeguen, the crowning glory of 
Louis XIV. 

Eecent event have wrested from France the greater part of 
Maria's inheritance ; but the subsequent loss of a province cannot 
be allowed to diminish the merit of the minister who acquired it : 
while the fact of such a concession having been made to France is 
an irresistible proof of the extent to which Fleury's policy had 
re-established the reputation and influence of his country in the 
eyes of foreign statesmen. He had given her what she had never 
had before, a character for moderation and justice ; which was fully 
recognised in the frequent appeals which were made in the later 
years to his own judgment. The mediation of no one in his day 
was so frequently invoked or so cheerfully acquiesced in, the most 
opposite parties accepting it with equal deference. Protestants, 
whose factions had for some years agitated Geneva, listened 
to his arbitration, and composed their differences ; he had no 
less success in arranging the disputes, between the Pope and 
the Court of Spain, on the subject of the sovereignty of Naples; 
and even the Infidels allowed his counsels no slight weight in the 
negotiations for the cessation of their war with the Empire, 
which resulted in the Peace of Belgrade. But nothing which his 
counsels or his character could effect in Germany, or Turkey, or at 
Rome itself, had such an influence on the subsequent future of 
France, and, indeed, of all Europe, as the interference to which he 



A.D. 1738.] AFFAIES OF COKSICA. 389 

■was invited in the affairs of a petty island wliicli had never for a 
moment risen to the rank of an independent power. 

The Corsicans had lately revolted from their ancient masters 
the Genoese. Though few in numbers (for the population of the 
island ^id not greatly exceed 120,000 persons of all ages), they 
were a fierce and restless people, keeping the Genoese in a state of 
perpetual disquiet and uneasiness by their factions and seditions, 
and they were consequently ruled by them in a spirit of severe 
coercion, and often of intolerable oppression. After several out- 
breaks within a few years, in 17S6 the Corsicans altogether threw 
off their allegiance to the republic, and elected a Westphalian 
baron, Theodore Neuhof, as their king. The Genoese had gene- 
rally relied on the aid of Austria to quell their previous insurrec- 
tions ; but on the occasion of this new revolt, they applied to Fleury 
for the assistance of France, and the cardinal at once sent a body 
of troops to the island which crushed the insurrection and expelled 
the king. He did more, in the hope of putting an end to the 
tyrannical violence with which its Genoese masters had provoked 
revolt, and of establishing permanent tranquillity in the island, he 
combined, with the cabinet of Vienna, to frame a constitution for 
Corsica, which they compelled Genoa to accept. The Genoese did 
not long regard its provisions ; but Fleury's j udicious and humane 
interposition gave France an influence in the island which even- 
tually led to her purchase of the sovereignty with the consent of 
the native nobles ; and to the adoption of the greatest of Corsica's 
sons, Napoleon Buonaparte, as a born subject and citizen of France. 

Fleury died at the beginning of 1743. No minister had ever 
so long a tenure of undisturbed power, and none had exerted their 
power more beneficially to the nation. As long as it was possible, 
he had preserved peace ; and his death is believed to have been 
accelerated by mortification at the failure of his attempts to main- 
tain it longer. He had done what was far harder, he had restored 
economy and a certain degree of decency to the most extravagant 
and profligate of courts ; in an age of almost universal corrup- 
tion, he had kept his personal integrity unsullied ; and, dying poor, 
after seventeen years of absolute control of all the revenues of the 
Mngdom, he afforded an example of disinterested probity, which 
he had not been able to copy from his predecessors, and of which 
he left no imitator among those who succeeded him. 

The first war in which, under his rule, his country was involved 
with the Empire, had been, as we have seen, termioated to her 
great advantage after two campaigns. The other was still in 
progress at his death : it was not till after that event that the 
French soldiers were concerned in any battles in the open field, 
and when they were, it was made abundantly clear that Fleury 



390 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1738. 

had never suffered liis regard for economy to impair the efficiency 
of the army. Dettingen, indeed, was a defeat, but that it was so 
was owing not to the inefficiency of the troops, nor to any unsliilful- 
ness on the part of the commander-in-chief, the Duke de Noailles, 
hut to the rash insubordination of one of his generals of division, 
who, by an unreasonable and unauthorised advance of his brigade, 
baffled the combinations which must have ensured a decisive 
triumph. But Fontenoy, Raucoux, and Laufeld, were all victories, 
which, though it was true that in the first two the preponderance 
of numbers was greatly on the side of the French, were deservedly 
held to establish the fame of Count Saxe, who won them, as the 
ablest general of his day. At Laufeld he was slightly inferior in 
numbers, but was again victorious, though, by the admission of 
the French themselves, the British troops, which in each instance 
formed a portion of the defeated army, rather augmented than lost 
the credit which they had earned in the same country in the days 
of Marlborough ; since it was upon them that the brunt of each 
battle fell, and since their defeat was only owing to the failure of 
their Austrian allies to support them.' 

Yet it was not without difficulty that Louis had been brought 
to entrust his armies to the count; and his unwillingness to do 
so is one of the most remarkable instances ever seen of the 
extent to which superstition and bigotry at times actuate even 
those who have utterly renounced all the principles and restraints 
of religion. For some years before his death Fleury had ceased 
to have any influence on the private conduct of his old pupil, who, 
at first, it may almost be said, out of mere indolence had yielded 
himself up to the guidance of artful courtiers habituated to the 
old riotous days of d'Orleans and Bourbon, and sighing for theij: 
return. He had allowed them to alienate him from his vdfe, and 
when he had once plunged into vice, he speedily outran their worst 
lessons, till his licentiousness, far exceeding the worst profligacy of 
his predecessors, shocked even those who had originally prompted 
it. He was now living in open adulteiy with three sisters, and 
the almost nightly orgies with which he entertained them were 
reported to surpass the worst excesses of the regency. Yet, wheu 
the old de Noailles advised him to make Saxe his commander-in- 
chief, he could not be brought to consent, objecting not that the 
count was a foreigner, but that he was a Huguenot. It would 
have been more correct to say that he was not a Roman Catholic, 
for in reality Saxe was not much more trammelled in his practice 
by obligations of religion than Louis himself. But it was not till 
he had been nearly four years at war that the manifest inefficiency 
of most of his other generals compelled the king to lay aside his 
scruples, and to confer a marshal's stafi" on one who denied the 



A.D. 1746.] SKILL OF MARSHAL SAXE. 391 

efficacy of priestly absolution. From that day, however chequered 
might be the fortunes of the French arms in other quarters, the 
operations of the force confided to Saxe were a succession of 
triumphs. I have already alluded to his difierent battles, and the 
details of one fight so nearly resemble those of another, that at 
such a distance of time it would be improfitable to dwell on them ; 
but that Saxe was one of those commanders of the first class who, 
in addition to their skill as strategists and tacticians, have also the 
art of inspiring their men and all with whom they come in contact 
with confidence, is proved by an anecdote which one of the chro- 
niclers of his campaigns has preserved, and which is so character- 
istic of French levity as well as of French courage as to deserve 
to be repeated. In October 1746 the marshal, at the head of 
100,000 men, was preparing, to attack a strong position which 
Prince Charles of I^orraine, whom the peace of Dresden had 
enabled his government to transfer to the Netherlands, had taken 
up with 80,000 men at Raucoux.^ Saxe had brought with him 
a company of comedians from Paris, and every evening his camp 
was enlivened by private theatricals j but on the night of the tenth, 
when the curtain fell, the leading actress advanced to the footlights 
and announced that, on the ensuing evening there would be no 
performance on account of the intended battle ; but that on the 
twelfth the company would have the honour of representing ' The 
Village Cock.' No doubt the performance took place, for on the 
eleventh the Prince's position was forced at all points. He lost 
4,000 men killed and wounded, 3,000 prisoners, with most of his 
guns and baggage ; and had he not taken the precaution beforehand 
to construct some bridges over the Meuse, his army would have 
been annihilated. 

The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle closed the campaigns of Saxe, 
who died two years afterwards of premature old age which he had 
brought on by his licentious life. His deeds in war are the last 
transactions in the reign, though it was protracted for more than 
a quarter of a century, which it is possible to contemplate without 
shame and pity for the debasement of a great people. Though 
little more than five years had elapsed since the death of Fleury, 
they had sufficed to undo the greater part of his work. The ac- 
cumulations of his wise economy were dissipated, the most fright- 
ful distress was again pressing on the lower classes, especially in 
the agricultural districts. In some provinces the people were 
dying of famine ; in others, the peasantry were with difficulty 
preserving a miserable life with bread made of fern, and other 
food still more unpalatable and unwholesome. Yet the time 

' Eaucoux is e village in the Meure, between Liege and Maestriclit. 



392 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1750. 

when so large a part of the population was howed down beneath 
such sufferings is the very one which Voltaire selects as the golden 
age of modern Europe, and of the nation. He no doubt, was, 
giving utterance to the feelings of the wealthy and the noble, who 
while they beheld the growth of verdant avenues in the boule- 
vards of Paris, and splendid hotels and theatres rising in the 
capital, and other chief towns of the Mngdcm, cared not to 
look lower, but made even the misery of the poor more unen- 
durable by the callous indifference with which they regarded it. 
And yet there were not wanting signs visible enough to warn 
those foreigners who observed what was going on, and were at the 
trouble of forming an independent judgment, that beneath this 
superficial prosperity and ostentation of wealth a feeling of discon- 
tent existed, and was rapidly spreading to an extent which threat- 
ened the institutions of the country. The danger was perceived 
not only by an experienced statesman and diplomatist, like Lord 
Chesterfield, who, about this time, in wi'iting to his son who was 
travelling in France, bade him watch the progress of affiiirs in the 
country, since ' all the symptoms which he had ever met with 
in history previous to great changes and revolutions in government 
were now existing and daily increasing in France ; ' but by a 
scholar as entirely unpractised in state affairs as Goldsmith, who 
had no guide but his own natural acuteness, yet whose impres- 
sions were the same as those of the old courtier, minister, and 
diplomatist, and whose warning voice was little less distinct.^ 

Doubtless, two men so different were led to coincide in their 
anticipations very much by the tone which now began to be 
adopted among the men of science in France, and those whose 
writings had the chief infi aence upon public opinion. One of the 
most degrading characteristics of the reign of Louis XIV. had 
been the abject servility of all the men of genius. The regent 
Orleans, who, in spite of his vices, had a more manly spirit than 
that monarch, had relieved literature from-that reproach by his 
own indifference to flattery, which would have done him honour, 
if other parts of his conduct had not made it doubtful whether 
what seemed to be magnanimity were not in reality an in- 
ditference to the opinions entertained of him by any part of the 
nation. But he had at the same time substituted a worse evil 
for that which he had extinguished. At no period of the last 
reign had any author ventured openly to disparage or ridicule 
religion, much less to make any open profession of infidelity ; but, 
under the unhappy sway of Orleans and Bourbon, the habitual 
profaneness of their conversation naturally gave the tone to the 

1 Chinese Letters, 'No. 55. 



A.D. 1750.] CAREER OF VOLTAIRE. 393 

writers of tlie capital : those who wished to be well with the 
court imitating its language, and reproducing in their writings the 
ibul witticisms which were approved and echoed at the royal 
table ; while impiety gradually became more attractive or at least 
more fashionable than indecency. And as men who disown re- 
ligion rarely stop there, but usually seek to discard the restraints 
of human laws also, the most popular authors began to attack all 
ancient institutions, to seek to bring the laws and constitution of 
the country into contempt, and to prepare the minds of the people 
for a new order of things. 

It is singular that the author who subsequently earned the 
greatest celebrity by writings of this class, and who, by the brilli- 
ancy of his talents and contempt of all decency might have been 
supposed to be calculated above all others to be the idol of such a 
society as the regent gathered round him, was only notorious in 
that day as having fallen under his displeasure, and as having been 
imprisoned by his order, on a charge of which he was wholly 
innocent 5 that of having published a satire on the late king. 
Voltaire was the son of a notary of most respectable character, 
named Arouet, who hoped to wean him from the taste for licen- 
tiousness which he displayed, even in his early boyhood, by sending 
him to a college of the Jesuits to complete his education. The 
Jesuits left him worse than they found him,- the lessons of 
morality which their words inculcated were neutralised by the 
indulgence which they showed for every kind of profligacy when 
practised by the high-bom or the powerful ; and he learnt little of 
them but a contempt for their whole order, of which, in his 
maturer years, he became an unwearied and triumphant assailant. 
After he quitted their college, his excesses grew more unrestrained 
and scandalous than ever ; so that before he came of age his father 
had disowned him ; and he had changed his name to Voltaire to 
disguise the relationship. After he was released from the Bastille, 
he visited England : but, it must be confessed, to learn as little 
good from his vi^it to our country as from his sojourn at the 
Jesuits' college. He acquired indeed an insight into some of the 
advantages of the British constitution, and conceived a high admira- 
tion for that real freedom of opinion and Kberty of discussion of all 
subjects which was enjoyed by all classes ; but at the same time 
he made the acquaintance of Lord Bolingbroke, a man who, 
though the ablest of our living statesmen, was equally notorious 
for his wit and his debaucheries ; who by his congeniality of cha- 
racter speedily obtained a predominant influence over the young 
Frenchman's mind ; and who, being himself a sceptic, easily per- 
suaded Voltaire to identify the freedom which he admired with 
irreligion. And the fruit of his teaching was shown when, on 



394 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1750. 

his return to Paris, Voltaire published more than one book so 
openly infidel, and at the same time so indecent, as to provoke 
the formal condemnation of the parliament of Paris. Another 
writer of the same school was Rousseau, probably still more ex- 
tensively known in foreign countries ; and, if less distinct in his 
professions of infidelity than Voltaire, a still more avowed enemy 
of all existing institutions, all laws, and all restraints on the indul- 
gence of the passions ; and who, by the combination of senti- 
ment and sensuality with which his mind was possessed, and by 
the attractiveness of his style, exercised a still more pernicious 
influence in the morals of the age than Voltaire himself. The 
leading motive of both, in spite of their great abilities, was 
evidently a diseased and restless vanity. But there was also a 
graver band of men of science who, being equally hostile to religion, 
yet conducted their attacks with different weapons, and, while 
Voltaire assailed all that was sacred by ridicule, and Rousseau 
undermined every decent feeling by his seductive tales, brought 
against everything sacred the heavier artillery of learning and 
professedly regular argument. Diderot was a metaphysician, at 
once eloquent and logical : Condillac was unrivalled for the 
perspicuity of his expositions : D'Alembert, as a mathema- 
tician, had had no equal in France since Pascal : and, in 1751, 
these men, with other associates of eminence in their respective 
branches of knowledge, began now to issue an Encyclopaedia, 
which, under pretext of explaining every branch of science, was in 
truth an organised attack upon Christianity, and, in some of its 
articles, on religion of every kind, even on the most meagre belief 
in an overruling Providence. The contributors, indeed, were not 
all infidels. BuSbn, the great naturalist, who joined them, though 
in his speculations on the origin of the earth and on geology, a 
science of which he may be regarded as the founder, he treated the 
historical authority of Moses with but little reverence, wrote no 
line intended to oftend the scruples of the devout, and even con- 
sented to apologise for some expressions which he had used in 
questioning the received interpretation of parts of Genesis, when 
he found that the priests had taken alarm at his freedom : Duclos, 
too, whose studies and contributions were generally of a historical 
character, in the very articles which he furnished on the manners 
of the age, and other kindred subjects, wrote with such scrupulous 
decorum, that Louis, the iufamy of whose whole life did not 
debar him from intervals of sound judgment on the conduct and 
character of others, pronounced his contributions those of a wortliy 
man. But the very fairness of these men's characters, and the 
correctness of their language, increased the mischief done by the 
others, whose advocates were thus enabled to contend that none 



A.T). 1751.] THE ENCYCLOPiEDISTS. 395 

of their writings were sucli as to prevent men of strict purity from 
uniting with them : and their share in the Encyclopaedia was re- 
garded by many, or at least was represented, as a certificate of the 
propriety of the whole publication. It obtained an enormous circu- 
lation; and the influence it acquired over the restless minds of the 
existing generation has always been reckoned by those who have / , . 

studied the signs of the times to have been very effective in P^^V.,"^;^^ 
paring the way for the Revolution. 

A curious proof bow little bigotry and intolerance are indica- 
tions of sincerity in religion is afforded by the circumstance that, 
just at this time, wben profaneness and licentiousness were more 
universal, unrestrained, and shameless than they had ever been, 
religious persecutions were renewed with all the cruelty of the 
days of Louvois. The principal desire of the beneficed clergy who 
stimulated them was to attack tlie Jansenists, who had recently 
made converts of a character and rank to excite their bitterest 
jealousy. The sect did not now number many priests, since, 
throughout the reign, ecclesiastical promotion bad been steadily 
withheld fi'om its adherents, but its lay members were more 
numerous and influential than ever. They formed a great majority 
of the parliament. One prince of the blood royal, the young 
Duke of Orleans, whose life of scrupulous purity and devotion 
afforded a pleasing contrast to the infamy of the former bearers of 
that title, avowed his adoption of their doctrines. And though 
the .Tesuits, supported by the sanction of Beaumont, archbishop 
of Paris, did at first venture on extreme measures even towards 
the prince, refusing him the sacraments on his deathbed, and ex- 
communicating a Jansenist priest attached to his household, their 
conduct produced such a commotion that Louis himself was com- 
pelled to interfere. He did so with singular energy ; chastising 
both parties : prohibiting the parliament, which had arrested some 
of the most violent of the Jesuits, from further deliberation on 
ecclesiastical matters ; seizing their registers ; and, after that, 
banishing the archbishop. But this spasmodic vigour, which was 
not likely to be maintained by such a monarch, failed to put an 
end to the strife. It rather gave it a form more pernicious to the 
body of the people, by investing the whole quarrel with a ridiculous 
aspect. Neither party were disarmed ; they only carried on the 
contest with new weapons. The Jesuits attacked the Jansenists 
with satires and farces, of which the language but little became a 
clerical pen, and the incidents could hardly have been conceived 
by a purely spiritual imagination. The Jansenists encountered 
the pen with the pencil, and filled the shops of the picture dealers 
with humorous and stinging caricatures of the Jesuits, handing 
over their adversaries to the prince of darkness, in which it was 



396 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1757. 

often difficult to distinguisli the priest from the devil. Those 
who were wholly indiiFerent to the subject aud to religion at all^ 
and they perhaps were the most numerous class of all, laughed at 
botli alike, and insulted both, and common decency at the same 
time, with profane and ribald lampoons, which were sung about the 
streets. And so the contest proceeded, to the great embarrassment 
of the government, till at last, in 1754, the birth of a young prince 
furnished a plea for a reconciliation, by which the Jansenists were 
so far the gainers that they obtained more toleration and even in- 
dulgence than had been shown to them for many years ; while it 
was compensated to the clergy who had denounced them by a con- 
firmation of their right to exemption from taxation, of which pre- 
viously a new finance minister, M. Machault, had been proposing to 
deprive them. 

But the failure of their attack on the Jansenists only made the 
clergy more resolute to crush the Huguenots, a comparatively 
small band of whom still remained in the country, and who had 
no avowed defenders in high places. Their enemies easily enlisted 
on their side many of the most infamous characters of the kingdom, 
who, as Louis XIV. had been, were glad to purchase the priests' 
connivance at their own profligacy by persecuting those who, 
though pure in their practice, were heterodox in their principles. 
The reigning mistress was zealous in her antipathy to heretics, and 
next to her in zeal, was a man notorious for every kind of baseness, 
for the foulest profligacy united to the most unrestrained rapacity 
and shameless corruption, the Duke de Kichelieu. Unfortunately, 
he was in a position which enabled him to give unusual effect to 
his orthodoxy. He was governor of Languedoc, and that province 
had always been one of the strongholds of the French reformers. 
He tore himself for a while from the luxuries and dissipations of 
Paris to visit his government, for the sole purpose of tormenting 
and extinguishing the scanty relics of that once powerful sect. 
Again, as in the daj's of Louvois, the dragoons were let loose on 
the hapless villages and peasantry, while Richelieu offered from 
his own purse enormous rewai'ds to any one who should apprehend, 
or give information which should lead to the apprehension of, any 
Huguenot minister. Several preachers were seized and summarily 
put to death, while numbers of men, women, and even children, 
who were accused of having attended their preachings, were 
hurried off" without trial to the galleys : and by a refinement of 
cruelty, which not even the most ferocious of former persecutors 
had devised, Kichelieu made even the natural affections an engine 
to entrap victims who had escaped him; seizing the wives and 
children of some of the ministers who had fled the province, and 
threatening them with torture or death if their husbands or fathers 



A.D. 1757.] PERSECUTION IN LANGUEDOC. 397 

fjiiled to surrender. At last the renewal of war, by providing 
other employment for the troops, and for Richelieu himself as 
commander of an army, relieved the remnant of the Huguenots 
from his cruelties. But the whole series of transactions was very 
injurious to the government and to religion. To religion, because 
the multitude of the people, from a contemplation of the mutual 
ridicule which Jesuits and Jansenists heaped upon each other, 
were led to entertain a contempt not only for the two sects, but for 
religion itself, which was the cause of the quarrel : a contempt 
which was not lessened when the clergy afterwards put forward 
as the champion of Catholicism such a man as Richelieu, so deeply 
stained with the meanest vices as to be the laughing-stock and jest 
of his own soldiers.^ And, in at least an equal degree did it bring 
disrepute on the government which had proved unable to ex- 
tinguish the first quarrel, except by the most impolitic concessions : 
and which in its treatment of the PTuguenots had not scrupled to 
sanction the renewal of cruelties of which even so callous a tyrant 
as Louis XIV. had on his deathbed confessed his repentance. 

Nor were the other events of the reign calculated to undo that 
unfavorable impression. We saw in the last chapter what deep 
disgrace the rout of Rosbach inflicted on the French arms : nor 
was that the only disaster which their alliance with Austria and 
the quarrel with England inflicted on them in the Seven Years' 
War. In the extreme east and in the extreme west, the country 
had equal cause to lament the impolicy of its rulers. In America 
they were expelled from Canada : a colony of which they were 
justly proud as a monument of the sagacity of Henrj' IV., who had 
not been deterred from establishing it by the warnings of Sully 
himself, and had shown himself in that instance a better political 
economist than his great minister. At the same time all their 
most important settlements iu India were wrested from them. Sir 
Eyre Coote routed their best army at Wandewash, captured their 
chief town Pondicherry, taking prisoner their governor- general, 
the unfortunate Lally, and sending him as a prisoner to England ; 
while on the sea and on their own coast their humiliation was 
deeper still. One fleet was defeated in the Mediterranean ; 
auother was nearly annihilated iu the Bay of Biscay, in sight of its 
own harbour : and not a port or town on the whole coast from 
Calais to the Pyrenees was safe from the attacks of the British 
squadrons. Such a series of disasters, at once dishonouring and 
damaging, was not calculated to lead the nation to look with 



1 A splendid hotel, which Eichelieu cost was defraj'ed from the proceeds 
built in Pari?, was nicknamed the of his plunder of that province. 
Palace of Hanover, to imply that its 



398 MODERN HISTORY. La.d. 1763. 

greater favour on the government, or to forget its mismanagement 
of affairs in peace, in consideration of its conduct of war. 

Every circumstance in every quarter contributed to increase the 
discontent. The savings with which the economy and uprightness 
of Fleury had enriched the treasury had long been dissipated, 
partly by the recent wars, and still more by the rapacity of the 
king's favourites, and by his own and their extravagance. The 
finances of the kingdom had again fallen into the same inextricable 
disorder as when, at the beginning of the reign, the Duke de 
St.-Simon had advised the regent to proclaim a national bank- 
ruptcy ; and the general embarrassment of the court and of the 
wealthier classes naturally descended downwards towards the 
poor, till in many provinces the recurrence of winter brought with 
it annual starvation. The controllers of finance were at their 
wits' end. One, a statesman both able and honest, M. Machault, 
endeavoured to effect some reform by the abolition of the ex- 
emptions from taxation which were claimed by the nobles, a class 
which, for that purpose, included almost every one who held office 
by commission from the crown, and by all the clergy ; but the 
subsequent weakness of the government not only, as has been 
already mentioned, restored the privilege to the clergy, but even 
allowed its continuance in some of the provinces, whose resistance 
to the new law was in exact proportion to their wealth, and there- 
fore to the importance of the abolition of their old privileges to 
the national welfare ; and, even where the liability of all classes 
to taxation was enforced, it was not extended beyond a slight 
income-tax ; and the bulk of imposts and duties were still collected 
only from the comparatively poor. To attempt to extinguish a 
system so pernicious as that under which the wealthiest classes 
were excused from contributing to the necessities of the state, was 
so obvious an expedient as hardly to deserve any especial praise ; 
but to fail in it was more mischievous than not to have made the 
attempt, and partial success was the worst kind of failure. 

Machault did not remain long in office ; and his successors, who 
succeeded one another with unparalleled rapidity, confessed the 
greatness of the evil, and their inability to overcome it by the 
variety and inconsistency of their schemes. Political economists, 
too, rose up with the most opposite plans for the development of 
the resources of the nation, and the restoration of the balance 
between revenue and expenditure. One looked only to trade and 
commerce ; another affirmed agriculture to be the sole prop on 
which a nation could rely for permanent prosperity. The politi- 
cians and pamphleteers were divided between the opposite theories : 
and the ministers floundered about in a state of hopeless bewilder- 
ment between them : if one established free trade, his successor's 



A.u. 1763.] EMBARRASSMENT OF THE GOVERNMENT. 399 

first measure was to reimpose restrictions : the only policy in 
which every minister agreed was the imposition of new taxes ; in 
this each vied with his predecessor, while all who had any secret 
influence in the state exerted it to baffle every scheme that was 
proposed, since none could be devised which did not in some 
degree interfere with existing interests. If, in the hope of bring- 
ing the income of the state and its outgoings to a level, the con- 
troller suggested a diminution of the expenditure of the court, 
which now exceeded by far the most lavish extravagance of the 
preceding reign, the whole court, courtiers, mistresses, the king 
himself, and even his own colleagues in office, pronounced the 
scheme one which could not be entertained even for a moment. 
We have seen the fate of Machault's attempt to abolish exemptions. 
If any of his successors revived it, he was met by a resistance from 
all the exempt classes, which was encouraged and justified by the 
success with which that minister had been defeated. Even if he 
sought such small augmentation of the available revenue as, 
without touching any established principles or privileges, might 
be derived from improved management, he raised in arms the 
whole company of intendents, superintendants, collectors, and 
deputy collectors, who were amassing large fortunes under the 
existing system or want of system, which facilitated every kind of 
extortion and peculation. And every opponent of reform could 
reckon on the support of the parliament, which denounced with 
equal vehemence every expedient proposed. 

A desire to crush the parliament may be said to have been a 
second object in which every successive minister agreed. The 
factious and corrupt motives which for many generations had 
animated the political conduct of the members deserved any 
chastisement that the monarch could inflict; but, as if it had 
been fated that nothing done in this reign after the death of 
Fleury should be dictated by, or be defensible on, any proper prin- 
ciple of government, it happened that when at last the king's dis- 
pleasure did fall on the coimcillors, it chastised not their political 
misconduct and persevering attempts to encroach on the royal 
authority, but almost their only action which for many years had 
been to their credit. They had ventured to protect the attorney- 
general of Brittany, M. La Chalotais, a lawyer of the very highest 
reputation for professional knowledge, and for integrity, against 
the governor of the province, the Duke d'Aiguillon, a man, who, 
in addition to more ordinary vices, laboured under the stigma of 
personal cowardice. Like most cowards, the duke was of a 
tyrannical temper : because La Chalotais had ventured to defend 
the rights of his fellow provincials, on which he was endeavouring 
to trample, he prosecuted him on a charge which he did not hesi- 



iOO MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1771. 

tate to support by forged documents. The Bretons, in retaliation, 
impeaclied the duke ; and the parliament of Paris, the only tri- 
bunal before which a peer of France could be tried, by the tone of 
their proceedings, showed a manifest inclination to decide against 
him. Louis, who, for some reason or other, regarded D'Aiguillon 
with especial favour, commanded them to discontinue the trial. 
They could not dare to disobey ; but, before adjourning, pronounced 
sentence that enough had been proved to stain the duke's honour, 
and they prohibited him therefore from exercising any of the 
rights of the peerage till he should have established his innocence. 
The king went down to their palace, tore the sentence from their 
registers, summoned the councillors before him, and severely 
reprimanded them for their contumacy and disloyalty. They 
declared such a reproof to be a violation of their j udicial indepen- 
dence, suspended their sittings altogether ; and Louis, now guided 
by a young lawyer, M. Maupeou, whom he had lately made 
chancellor, and who had acuteness enough to perceive what kind 
of advice it was hoped he would give, arrested and banished every 
individual councillor, and by a formal edict abolished parliaments 
for ever, uniting the provincial assemblies in the same condemna- 
tion. 

It is curious that the citizens of Paris, who, a century before, 
had not feared to confront the whole power of the state in defence 
of a single councillor, now viewed the extinction of the whole 
body with the most complete indifference ; and it can hardly have 
proceeded from anything but their own sense of how completely 
they had lost their former hold on the goodwill of the people, 
that the members themselves submitted unresistingly to the 
edict : the most unconstitutional, if such a word can be applied 
to the proceedings of a despotic government, on which any king 
of Prance had ventured for at least three centuries. 

Louis, who was by no means devoid of natural ability, but, 
when he chose to exert himself, could often judge correctly 
enough of the tendencies of the measures of the government, and 
of the feelings of the nation, was by no means blind to the general 
contempt into which the authority of government had fallen in 
France, or to the dangerous results which might be expected to 
follow from such a feeling. On more than one occasion he re- 
marked that, though the storm might be averted from his own 
head, his successor would find it very difficult to steer the ship 
through the breakers ; and there is no reason to believe that he 
was in the least disquieted by the apprehension, or ever felt a 
single spark of patriotism or regard for his own race, such as might 
prompt him to make the slightest effort to save his people or his 
own descendants from the dan<rers which he foresaw. Yet had he 



A.D. 1774.] ABOLITION OF THE OllDER OF JESUITS. 401 

been as patriotic as honest, and as judicious as be was in fact 
destitute of all sucb qualities, be could bave adopted no measure 
better calculated to avert the coming evils, by facilitating the 
adoption of reforms -which every statesman knew to be indispen- 
sable f but to which the parliaments had always presented the 
greatest obstacles. Unhappily, one of the first measures of the 
grandson who succeeded him was to undo this, the most beneficial 
measure of the reign, and thus once more to give the malcontents 
a leader capahle of speaking with an appearance of legitimate 
authority. It might have been of equal consequence that a few 
years before Louis had suppressed the Jesuits also, confiscating and 
putting up for sale all the property which the Order possessed in 
France as an ecclesiastical corporation, if, before his death, 
Clement XIV. had not abolished the whole Order. Louis had, 
no doubt, been mainly led to pass his edict against them by their 
proved complicity in the conspiracy for the murder of the King 
of Portugal, and by his belief that they had sanctioned, if not 
instigated, the attack of Damiens upon himself. The Pope was 
influenced mainly by the urgency of the French minister, and by 
the desire of recovering the Veuaissin and Avignon, with which 
his compliance was purchased. And it seemed to reflect some 
degree of glory on Louis that he, a temporal prince, should thus 
have been able to constrain the Head of his Church to deal so 
severely with an Order which, whatever the crimes in which, by 
actual participation or secret connivance, it had borne a share, had 
at least been always a faithful support of the Papal authority, the 
upholding of which had been the principal object of its insti- 
tution. 

Louis died of the smallpox in the spring of 1774. He had 
reigned almost sixty years, and had been in full possession of the 
royal authority for nearly fifty. ^ His reign presents but few 
marked events; and I have touched upon it as lightly as possible, 
because there is neither pleasure nor profit to be derived from 
the contemplation of the infamy of a king or of the dishonour of 
a nation. For the last forty years Louis's own life was one of a 
profligacy growing coarser and fouler day by day. For nearly as 
long the power and renown of the nation was hurrying down a 
rapid descent ; and the misery of all but the wealthiest class was 
steadily augmenting. With Fleury and Saxe everything that was 
wise, or upright, or gallant in the nation seemed to have passed 
away ; and the sole reason for touching at all on the occurrences 
of the last five-and-twenty years of the life of Louis is to be found 
in the degree in which they serve to explain the animosity against 

' He was married in the autumn of 1725. 



402 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1774. 

the liigber orders, against the nobles, the clergy, and the king, 
which a large portion of the nation displayed in the next reign. 

The greater part of all this evil is traceable directly to the con- 
duct of the king himself. The pecuniary distress was wholly 
caused by his personal extrayagance, for, as we have seen, Fleury 
had at one time brought the finances of the kingdom into a 
healthy condition. Yet the original fault of Louis was rather 
weakness than wickedness. And the unparalleled profligacy of 
his life is to be traced in the first instance to his submission to the 
arts and cajoleries of the worthless courtiers, who regretted the 
license of the regency, rather than to any innate appetite for vice. 
Indeed, he was naturally not devoid of a sort of passive goodness, 
of such, at least, as consists in a feeling of respect for virtue and 
holiness in others : of a desire to earn praise and goodwill ; and of 
that kind of moderate humanity which pities, if it does not take 
any active steps to relieve, sufiering. Nor was he destitute of 
courage, and of some degree of political foresight. But both good- 
nature and good sense were neutralised by an incurable indolence, 
of both body and mind ; and b}'^ a fatal facility of temper which 
led him at the bidding of the most worthless of his courtiers to 
violate all his public and private duties; to outrage the feelings 
of a beautiful and faithful wife, whom at first, till he allowed 
them to alienate him from her, he regarded with affection and 
even admiration : gradually to surrender the whole government of 
the kingdom to the caprices and rapacity of mistresses without 
education or sense as without decency : and thus to stamp his 
own name with ineffaceable infamy, while bequeathing to his 
amiable and virtuous successor a heritage of trouble and misery, 
from which few could have extricated themselves, and with which 
his veiy virtues disqualified him from contending. 



A.D. 1662.] CONSPIRACY AGAINST POLAND. 403 



CHAPTER XVIII. 
A.D. 1772 — 1794. 

THE Seven Years' "War liad been waged witli sucli fierceness 
not only of national animosity, but of personal rancour, be- 
tween tbe sovereigns themselves ; the wounds which the different 
belligerents had inflicted on each other had been so deep, and, in a 
military point of view, so dishonouring ; the conclusion, too, had 
been so mortifying to all, that ordinary politicians might well 
have supposed that it was but a hollow peace which had been 
signed at Huberstburg : and that any cordial co-operation between 
the antagonists in that terrible conflict could never be looked for, at 
least during the existence of the generation which had witnessed 
Kolin and Leuthen, Kunersdof and Zorndof. And the belief might 
have been well founded if the feeling and policy of nations were 
regulated by the same motives which sway the passions and in- 
fluence the conduct of individuals. But ambition has a short 
memory for past grievances ; and in the councils of statesmen 
ideas of expediency and mutual interest often oven-ule the keenest 
impulses of resentment or pride. And so, within ten years of the 
time when Austria and Prussia had dealt Frederic such terrible 
blows that he could scarcely bring his mind to survive them, and 
had in their turn sustained at his hand such overthrows as effaced 
the apparent disgrace, if they could not altogether repair the real 
injury which his defeats had brought upon his kingdom, the three 
nations combined together in a conspiracy against the indepen- 
dence, and finally against the existence, of a fourth, which the public 
opinion of every other country and of all succeeding generations 
has, with a rare unanimity, branded as one of the greatest political 
crimes ever committed. 

In a former chapter we have seen how the right, or rather the 
power, of giving a sovereign to Poland was one of the prizes in 
the contest between the great Czar of Russia and Charles ot 
Sweden, and the eventual triumph of Peter gave his successors a 
permanent influence in the affairs of that country, which they 
gradually expanded into the assertion of a positive right to inter- 
fere in its concerns, and to dictate to its rulers, not only on ques- 



i04 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1552. 

tions of fheir foreign policy, but on matters affecting the internal 
regulation and administration of their dominions. There had 
been a time when these conditions were reversed : when Poland 
had been the superior in power ; had eyen led one Muscovite 
monarch in captivity to Warsaw, and had compelled his subjects 
to receive a successor to him from the family of their own hing. In 
the middle ages, indeed, Poland had been first in renown and power 
of all the European nations on the east of the Rhine. The pro- 
vince from which Frederic derived his royal title, with that where 
Petersburg now stood, were both held as fiefs from her sovereign : 
who more than once was invested with the crowns of Hungary 
and Bohemia also, because both those nations looked on Poland as 
their chief bulwark against the inroads of the Infidel, It was a 
king of Poland and Hungary who drove back the victorious 
Amurath from the Danube ; compelling him to restore to the 
Christians more than one province of which he had made himself 
master; thus giving a respite, though brief, to Constantinople 
itself. And in the same age Poland had, also, a purer fame than 
that derived from deeds of war. French and Italian scholars con- 
fessed that not even in their own countries was education more 
generally diftused, or carried to a higher- pitch : as linguists, 
the Poles were confessedly unrivalled : and it was in the university 
of Cracow that Copernicus acquired the rudiments of that scientific 
knowledge by which he afterwards, in his turn, taught the whole 
world the real character of the system of the heavens. An honour 
of equally brilliant and still rarer lustre is shed upon the nation 
by the circumstance of its being the first in the history of Chris- 
tendom to recognise the great duty of religious toleration. In 
the year 1552, while the valleys of the Vaudois still, in their 
desolation, bore testimony to the ferocity of Francis ; while Mary 
of England was waiting for her brother's death to enable her to 
kindle the fires of Smithfield ; the dietof Poland formally denounced 
persecution, the members pledging themselves that in their country 
arms ' should never be taken up for any differences of religion ; 
nor should such differences ever be allowed to interfere with the 
common rights of citizenship,' possessed by all alike, whether 
Catholics or Protestants. 

Unhappily, neither literature, nor science, nor even a correct 
appreciation of every free man's right to freedom of opinion con- 
tribute more to the prosperity of a state, than vicious political 
principles, and a spirit of intrigue and faction tend to its undoing. 
And in no coimtry has a more incurably vicious system of govern- 
ment ever been devised, or have theoretical evils been less coun- 
teracted by the practical wisdom of the people. The constitution 
was an attempt to combine the principles of a monarchy and an 



i.D. 1572.] CONSTITUTION OF POLAND. 405 

arisfocratic republic. The king was elected by the nobles : the 
nobles could only be counted by tens of thousands : and though 
there were two assemblies, the senate and the diet, in imitation of 
the two British Houses of Parliament, the machinery was so de- 
fective that the members of both belonged to the same class, the 
nobles : a body whose vast numbers prevented any one from feel- 
ing responsibility, and inevitably opened the door to every sort of 
intrigue and corruption. A result which, in the middle of the 
seventeenth century, was further ensured by the strange provision 
which required absolute unanimity from the diet, even when it 
was attended by thousands of armed voters. So high and so 
sacred, according to the contrivers of this unexampled regulation, 
were the privileges of every freeman, that it would have been an 
intolerable injustice if the will of a single individual could have 
been overruled or constrained ; and they did not see that the powei 
thus given to a single person to prevent the whole body from coming 
to a decision, and thus to stop the whole business of the state, 
was, in fact, to subject all to one ; and to one for the soundness of 
whose judgment, or the purity of whose motives there could be 
no security. 

Anarchy and disorder could not fail to be the results of such a 
constitution ; but even before the establishment of this crowning 
absurdity, the liberuin veto, as it was called, a death-blow had 
been given to the independence of the country by the election of 
a foreign ting. By the death of Sigismund II., which took place 
in 1572, the male line of the Jagellons, the family which had 
furnished occupants to the throne for so many generations, that it 
had almost come to be regarded as their birthright, was extin- 
guished ; and it became necessary to seek elsewhere for his suc- 
cessor ; but so fully were all parties in Poland aware that their 
mutual jealousies would prevent the success of any noble of their 
own nation in the competition for the vacant throne, that among 
the candidates there was but one, the Duke of Prussia, who had 
any pretence to be looked on as a native prince. Of his com- 
petitors one was an Austrian, one a Swede, another a Frenchman, 
a fourth was even a Muscovite : and after a protracted contest, in 
which arguments founded on state policy were not sparingly rein- 
forced by the coarsest methods of corruption, the choice of the 
electors fell on the least worthy of all, and the one whose last 
exploit might have been supposed to have been an irremediable 
disqualification in the ej^es of a nation in which the principles ot 
religious toleration had been so cordially and so lately adopted, 
and which numbered so many Protestants among its citizens, as 
Poland. It fell on Henry, duke of Anjou, the next brother and 
presumptive heir of Charles IX. ; and as deeply stained as he 



406 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d, 1575. 

•witb the infamy of the recent massacre of St. Bartholomew. Cer- 
tainly, if it had been the object of the electors to astonish the 
world with the most marked contrast between the new king and 
his predecessor, they could not have selected one differing in 
every respect more widely from the chivalrous, humane, and en- 
lightened Sigismund, than the unworthy Valois prince, debased 
by every sort of vice, and for ever dishonoured with all the rest 
of his family by the foulest deed of blood which Europe had wit- 
nessed for centuries. And the plea by which the nobles justified 
or excused their choice was, if possible, more degrading to the 
nation than the choice itself. It secured to the country, they 
said, the protection of France ; and aid to its exchequer from the 
liberality of the French king, or of his mother, who ruled the base 
and miserable Charles. Henry did not long remain king. As if 
he feared that his subjects were bent on detaining him against his 
will, the moment he received intelligence of his brother's death, 
he fled by night stealthily and on foot from his castle at Cracow : 
not even condescending to make a formal abdication of the crown 
which his mother had purchased, Hislate subjects had just self- 
respect enough left to declare the throne which he had thus de- 
serted vacant ; but even his marked contempt for them could not 
teach them the wisdom of preferring a native ruler. Jealousy 
and party spirit were still stronger than patriotism : they crowned 
as their king foreigner after foreigner, who could hardly be ex- 
pected to have much feeling for the national honour : and under 
whose careless and corrupt rule the old martial renown of Poland 
withered away, and some of her fairest provinces were severed 
from her dominion. 

As we have seen in a former chapter, for a moment the heroism 
of Sobieski and his enthronement as her sovereign recalled the 
memory of the fame and power of her ancient princes of Polish 
blood ; and encouraged the hope that, under the sway of a native 
prince, she might recover the proud position which, under her 
foreign kings, she had lost. But the deliverer of Vienna was not 
spared long enough for his people to derive any permanent ad- 
vantage from his valour or his wisdom. And the disputes to 
which the election of his successor gave rise eventually afforded 
a nation, whose prince a century before could not obtain a pre- 
ference even over the worthless Henry of Anjou,' the means of 
making itself virtual master of the country. We have seen 
how for some years the decision who should be King of Poland 
depended on the issue of the war between Russia and Swedeu : 

' Among the candidates to whom ferred was Ivan Basilowitz, eldest 
the Duke of Anjou hud been pie- son of the Duke of Muscovy. 



A.D. 1761.] DEATH OF KING AUGUSTUS. 407 

how Charles's victories placed Stanislaus, a Pole, on the throne 
from which he had just expelled Augustus the Saxon; and how 
Stanislaus, in his turn, fled before the conqueror of Pultava ; and 
Augustus recovered his kingdom. The death of Charles for ever 
freed Augustas from the danger of any further change of fortune ; 
but it gave both him and the country which had chosen him for 
its king a master of a more settled purpose and more iron grasp 
than the Swede ; and for the next half century Poland was little 
better than a province of the rapidly growing Russian empire. 

In former times, the investing a King of Poland with the sove- 
reignty of Hungary or Bohemia was a great addition, not only to 
the dignity, but to the power of the Polish nation; and one from 
which, as we have seen, it reaped no little glory : but, in the last 
century, the placing the Polish crown on the head of the Electors 
of Saxony was a practical misfortune, since the king, being a 
foreigner, not unnaturally preferred for his residence his native 
capital, Dresden, to Warsaw ; and, since his absence from Poland 
and neglect of Polish interests and Polish feelings fomented and 
exasperated the factious divisions which had long been the curse 
of the country, and gave all parties sufficient grounds for com- 
plaint. The anarchy, which thus grew more and more complete 
every day, suited the views of the Russian sovereigns ; who had 
certainly, before the middle of the century, begun to entertain the 
idea of annexing the whole country to their own dominions. The 
plan was not viewed with equal complacency by other nations ; but 
the country which first proposed to interfere was too vacillating in 
its counsels and too low in reputation to give Russia any great 
alarm, while the shape which her interference was designed to 
take was only calculated to turn the existing jealousies and divi- 
sions of Poland into another channel, and in no respect to allay, 
much less to extinguish them. About 1754, the health of 
Augustus in., elector of Saxony and king of Poland, was known 
to be failing, and the statesmen, or rather the courtiers and profli- 
gate women who at that time swayed the counsels of France, con- 
ceived the idea of procuring the succession once more for a 
countryman of their own, the Prince of Conti. The projectors of 
that scheme were too capricious to persevere in it ; but, before the 
death of Augustus, which did not take place till 1763, a change in 
the afikirs of Russia had taken place, which, had the French 
ministers been ever so resolute or skilful, would have probably 
been sufficient to baffle their designs. 

We have seen, in a former chapter, that the Empress Elizabeth 
of Russia died in the winter of 1761. She was succeeded by her 
nephew, Peter III. ; a prince whose education, studiously ne- 
glected, had not been such as to qualify him for the exercise of 



408 MODERN HISTORY. [a..d. 1762. 

the autliority •whicli had now descended to him, and who was 
still .more unfortunate in being mariied to a princess of great capa- 
city and energy, but stained with the foulest vices. Her contem- 
porary, Louis of France, was not more shamelessly licentious : 
Frederic of Prussia was not more ambitious : and no sovereign of 
any country was ever more ruthless in trampling down every con- 
sideration of religion or humanity which might interfere with the 
gratification of her ambition. No princess was ever more elated 
at succeeding to a crown; but she had no inclination for the 
nominal dignity of an empress-consort. She resolved to rule 
alone : she despised her husband, to whom she had already given 
numerous rivals ; and, from the first moment of her elevation, she 
began to plot his destruction. Amorous and munificent, she 
found no difficulty in organising a conspiracy against him. He 
had been Emperor scarcely six months, when he was seized and 
murdered ; and Catharine was saluted by the army, and acknow- 
ledged by the nobles, as sole Empress. Another deed of blood 
seemed necessary to her complete security. Ivan HI., a child 
who had succeeded to the throne above twenty years before, and 
had been deposed to make room for Elizabeth, was still alive. 
She despatched assassins to murder him also. And having thus 
removed all partners and all rivals, she proceeded to govern her 
vast empire w^ith an authority which, for more than thirty years, 
no one dared to question, much less to resist. Not even when 
her son Paul, who was eight years old at his father's death, came 
of age, did anyone venture to raise a voice in support of his claims 
to the crown ; admiration for her administrative ability, and terror 
at her ferocity, alike contributing to make the nation, not yet civi- 
lised enougb to be delicate, acquiesce in the supremacy of one who 
was a disgrace to her people and to her sex. 

It was not likely that a sovereign so arbitrary, so fearless, and 
so imscrupulous would be inclined to allow a country so little to 
be feared or respected as France had now become to pretend to an 
influence in the afiairs of Poland, which the mere distance of her 
frontier must have prevented her from exercising, except through 
the complaisance of these nearer to the scene of action. Accor- 
dingl}'', the French ambassador had no sooner begun to sound her 
on the subject, and to hint at the projects that had been agitated 
in his own country, than she silenced him by the assertion, that 
' to her alone it belonged to give a king to Poland:' a declaration 
which she presently followed up by compelling the diet to elect 
Stanislaus Poniatowski, one of her own discarded lovers; but 
who, as a native Pole, was certainly a sovereign whom the nation 
could accept with less dishonour than a Saxon or a Frenchman. 
Even had he been less bound to her by his previous career, 



A.D. 1762.] ALLIANCE OF RUSSIA WITH PRUSSIA. 409 

Stanislaus would have been for her a fit tool with which to work 
out the Russian scheme of gradually absorbing Poland into her 
empire: for, though humane, amiable, and courteous, he was 
utterly devoid of foresight or firmness. But though she had no 
opposition to fear from her enemies, nor from the ruler of the 
country itself, she soon learnt that she had an ally who, though 
by no means unwilling to see Poland crippled or extinguished, 
would expect a share of the plunder. Elizabeth, as we have seen, 
had united her forces to those of Austria in the Seven Years' 
War, and her army had borne its share in the most splendid of its 
victories. But her nephew Peter had, on the contrary, conceived 
an enthusiastic admiration for the Prussian monarch ; and in the 
very first month after his accession, before his wife had time to 
plot against him, had broken off the alliance with the empress- 
queen, and, by ostentatious courtesies, had laboured to ingratiate 
himself with Frederic. Catharine had no personal admiration for 
a man who prided himself on being a woman-hater, and who was 
above fifty years old ; but she adopted her husband's policy towards 
him ; and, though no formal treaty of alliance was signed, it soon 
came to be imderstood that the two potentates had established a 
cordial understanding. 

The precise details and immediate causes of the events that 
followed neither the most careful research nor the most penetrat- 
ing sagacity of historians of many countries can enable us to relate 
with both fulness and certainty. The actors themselves were so 
ashamed of the transaction, that each endeavoured to represent his 
accomplices as the chief movers in, or the original proposers of, 
what was done. But if ever there was a case in which general belief 
may be accepted in the place of distinct evidence, it is the parti- 
tion of Poland which was the first fruits of this new friendship 
between nations which had lately been such deadly enemies. 
Catharine and Frederic were not long in discerning each other's 
views with respect to Poland ; now weaker and more distracted, • 
because her ruler was more inextiicably committed to obedience 
to a foreign master than at any former time. Catharine did not 
conceal from Frederic's ministers any more than she had concealed 
from those of Louis, her desire to become mistress of Poland. 
And he was equally resolved not to allow Poland to be crushed, 
and Russia to be aggrandised by her subjection, without obtaining 
some corresponding advantage for himself and his dominions. In 
fact, there was a portion of Poland which, as it would complete his 
possession of the country properly called Prussia, and would give 
him access to the Baltic, was coveted by him with far greater eageiv 
ness than any particular district was desired by Catharine. And it 
seemed to him that it ought not to be difficult to convince her 
19 



410 MODEIi^N HISTOIIY. [a.d. 1601. 

that the course most permanently advantageous to her would he 
the incorporation with her own dominions of those Polish pro- 
vinces which lay nearest to her frontier. The mere establishment 
of an influence, which, however predominant, could have no formal 
recognition, was evidently liable to be impaired at any time, since 
its maintenance must depend partly on the character of the Polish 
sovereign, (and future kings might not be as compliant as Stanis- 
laus) and partly on the acquiescence or submission of other states. 
A partition of the Polish provinces was no new idea : above a 
century before, in the time of the Great Elector of Brandenburgh, 
the Swedish ambassador, Count Stippenbach, had proposed to 
that prince that he, the Emperor, and bis own master the King of 
Sweden should divide the whole countrj' between them. But the 
mutual jealousies of the three potentates, and a fear of giving 
France a pretext for interfering in the affairs of the east of Europe, 
prevented the adoption of such a scheme at that time. It was 
revived in a more modified form by the Kiiig of Poland himself, 
Augustus II., who, alarmed at seeing the competition between 
himself and Stanislaus Leczinski converted into a subject of quarrel 
between Charles XII. and Peter, and, fearing not unreasonably 
that, like the earthen pot in the fable, he himself might be crushed 
in the collision between such powerful enemies, was willing to 
sacrifice one half of his kingdom and allow it to be divided be- 
tween them, if they in return would add the other half to Saxony 
as the perpetual inheritance of his family. The animosity, how- 
ever, between Sweden and Pussia then was a still more insur- 
mountable obstacle to the reception of his proposal than the 
jealousies which had baffled Stippenbach fifty years before, and 
Poland was still left entire. But the recollection of these old 
projects had undoubtedly prepared the minds of all the statesmen 
in the North for the consideration of some similar plan whenever 
it should appear practicable : while the extent to which it occu- 
pied their minds increases the difficulty of pronouncing with cer- 
tainty, who, in 1770, first put the proposal into words. The Em- 
peror Francis died in 1764, and was succeeded on the throne of 
Germany by his son .Joseph, who had long entertained a personal 
admiration for Frederic, which outweighed his sense of the injuries 
which his mother and his kingdom had suflPered from the Prussian 
king's unprovoked hostility. In 1700 he paid Frederic a visit at 
Neiss, which Frederic returned a few months afterwards, and the 
state of Poland was one of the subjects discussed at these inter- 
views. Five years later Frederic's brother. Prince Henry, visited 
Catharine : and in their conversations the design of stripping 
Poland of a third part of lier territory began to take a more de- 
finite shape. But both empress and prince feared the interposition 



A.D. 1772.] PAKTITION OF POLAND. 411 

of Austria, as ber husband's death had deprived Maria Teresa of 
no part of her leal authority, and it did not seem impossible that 
she might be inclined to renew her alliance with France to pre- 
vent the aggrandisement of neighbours, both of whom she had far 
more reason to fear than to tnist.^ 

Unhappily for the fame of the Empress-queen just at that 
moment she had listened to the suggestions of her minister Kaunitz 
to advance pretensions to some Polish districts, known as the 
Lordships of Zips, to which her claim was not unlike that which 
Fiederic thirty years before had advanced to Silesia. Zips had 
at one time belonged to the kingdom of Himgary ; but at least 
three hundred years before had been mortgaged or sold to the 
King of Poland, without any attempt having since been made 
to reclaim it. But Poland now had a weak king: her people 
were more than usually divided by religious dissensions j some of 
her southern provinces were suffering from a pestilence of great 
severity ; when Maria Teresa not only demanded the cession of 
the Lordships, but at the same moment poured her armies over 
the district, and showed a resolution to permit neither resistance 
nor interference to deliver from her grasp what she had thus ac- 
quired. The confederates in the North saw at once that such an act 
of open aggression disabled her from opposing the designs which 
they by this time had completed. It was rather the greatest 
possible encouragement to them, proving, as it did, how easily 
such a spoliation could be effected : so that, as Catharine re- 
marked, * Poland seemed a country where one had only to stoop 
to pick up whatever was needed ; ' and in this view they now 
proposed to the Austrian ministers to join in the act on which they 
had determined, and to share the spoil. After a decent pretence 
of coyness, the proposal was accepted. In the beginning of 1772 
a treaty was formally concluded, which divided one-third of 
Poland between the three allies ; specifying with precision the 
share which was to be assigned to each power. Frederic s portion 
was the smallest both in extent and population. It was West 
Prussia and Pomerelia, with the exception of the seaport of 
Dantzic and the inland fortress of Thorn. Russia was to have 
Polish Livonia and the rich provinces to the east of the Dwina; 
the acquisitions of Austria, though less extensive than those of 
Russia, in population exceeded those of both her allies united ; 
And were of sufficient importance to receive a new name as the 
kingdom of Gallicia. And, in the autumn of the same year, the 
three Powers, with an audacity so monstrous as to be almost 
comical, not only announced to the Poles the resolution which they 
had adopted, in a manifesto in which the injuries which Poland 

' See note in Coxe, v. 201. 



412 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1772. 

had in bygone days inflicted on tlie countries of her spoilers, and 
their consequent right to recover what had been wrongfully 
Tvrested from them, were oddly combined with an enumeration of 
the advantages which Poland herself was to derive from the pro- 
posed measure as one which would give her a more natural and sure 
boundary than she had enjoyed before ; and which required Poland 
herself to sanction her own miitilation by a formal vote of her 
own diet. 

For a moment it seemed as if so arrogant a demand had re- 
stored union to the national councils. Stanislaus himself, with a 
spirit hardly to be expected from a minion of Catharine, drew up an 
indignant and well-argued protest against the spoliation ; appealing 
to the other sovereigns of Christendom for support, and at first 
evinced a resolution to refuse to convoke a diet, or to take any 
step which could imply any co-operation on his part in the dis- 
memberment of his kingdom. But he soon learnt that no aid was 
to be expected from foreign princes ; and it was too plain that 
Poland unsupported could not for a moment resist the mighty 
league which was thus formed against her. Nor were the con-!- 
federates inclined to allow him the briefest respite. Treating bis 
delay in obeying their summons to convoke the diet as a contuma- 
cious insult, they at once poured troops into the country, and a 
combined force of 30,000 men marched upon Warsaw to compel 
an instant assemblage of the diet, and to overawe it when it should 
be assembled. Even when the king had consented to convoke 
the diet, the three sovereigns took not the least trouble to disguise 
the constraint under which it was to sit, or the fact that it was 
summoned not to deliberate, but to submit. They interfered with 
the elections : they introduced a new regulation that unanimity in 
its resolutions should not be necessary, but that the voice of the 
majority should be conclusive. And, while they openly bribed 
all the members who were willing to be corrupted, they spared no 
means to terrify those who were of a higher spirit, quartering large 
bodies of troops upon them, and threatening some of the most in- 
fluential with confiscation of their property. Yet all their exer- 
tions could only obtain a bare majority. After nearly six months 
of discussion, but fifty-two members yielded to foreign gold and 
foreign menaces, while fifty members still refused their sanction 
to the dismemberment of their country. But scanty as the 
majority was, it was suiScient for those who had already made 
themselves masters of the spoil. And, though many of those who 
had voted in the minority still formally protested against what had 
been done, the partitioners could afl^ord to disregard their de- 
nunciations, 'the last pangs and convulsions of expiring liberty,' as 
Burke * has called them, since the vehemence of their complaints 
' Annual Register, 1773, p. 40, 



A.D. 1773.J DEATH OF FREDEKIC II. 413 

only made it more manifest that no foreign power, neither Eng- 
land, nor France, nor Sweden, nor Holland, could be induced to 
interpose. 

The certainty of such indifference on the part of all not imme- 
diately interested, and the ease and impunity with which the 
spoliation had been perpetrated, were alone sufficient to ensure a 
repetition of it. For enough had been left to Poland on this occa- 
sion to render her still a tempting object of plunder. She had 
still seaports ; she had still provinces of great richness and fer- 
tility ; and she had still ten millions of people : and there can be 
little doubt that, from the very moment that Stanislaus had signed 
the treaty which deprived him of one-third of his dominions, those 
who had taken it began to contemplate the time when they should 
appropriate the rest. They had, indeed, gone through the form of 
framing a new constitution for what was left of Poland, which, 
however, retained most of the vices of the old one ; and which, in 
the eyes of all Europe, only served to convict them of shame- 
less duplicity, in formally guaranteeing a system which they did 
not for a moment intend to endure ; and, in less than twenty years, 
without a single subject of complaint having been afforded by 
Poland herself, whose only fault was that she had latterly greatly 
advanced, not only in wealth, but in political wisdom, and was 
showing a disposition to renounce the old principles and customs 
which had formerly proved so dangerous to her tranquillity, Russia 
and Prussia unblushingly undid their own work, broke down the 
constitution which they had guaranteed, and seized the whole 
country. 

The chief agents in the second spoliation were no longer the 
same. Frederic had died in 1786, having, in the twenty-three 
years which had passed over his head since the close of the Seven 
Years' War, done much to build himself up a purer fame than 
could be earned by military skill or warlike triumphs, even had 
his successes been far less chequered than, as we have seen, they 
had been. Except on the subject of his oWn literary talents, and 
of religion, he was, for a king, unusually open to conviction ; he 
was well aware how fearfully every part of his kingdom had 
suffered ; and, during the latter years of his reign, he laboured 
unremittingly, and for the most part with excellent judgment, to 
heal the wounds which his wars had inflicted on her. By im- 
proving the internal communications of the country', by opening 
roads and cutting canals, he encouraged the growth of her home 
trade ; he established manufactures in all the principal towns, in 
many of which articles were fabricated that had hitherto been un- 
known in Prussia as native productions. He instituted banks, 
which for a time he aided with the capital and security of the 



414 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1773. 

state : he also induced numbers of English farmers to settle in his 
dominions, in the hope of teaching his subjects a more skilful 
system of agriculture : and in these wise improvements no part of 
hi? kingdom participated more than his Polish provinces. His 
ruling passion, indeed, still betrayed itself by the assiduity -with 
which, above all other objects, he laboured at the augmentation 
and organisation of his army ; and, more laudably, by the care he 
took of his disabled veterans, and by the noble military hospital 
which he founded at Berlin, in imitation of our own institution at 
Chelsea, with the inscription, not more honorable than true, 
* Lseso sed invicto militi.' • 

The education of the people was also a subject in which he took 
an unceasing interest ; foimding schools and colleges in most of 
the provinces; though he retained his own strange indifference to 
the national language to the end of his life, never acquiring suffi- 
cient familiarity with it to read the works of the great German 
authors, his contemporaries, of Klopstock, Lessing, Wieland, and 
their fellow-labourers, who were already vindicating the claims of 
Germany to an honorable place in the literature of nations. His 
personal favour and friendship was still confined to the French, 
and unhappily to the most intidel writers of that country For, 
painful as it is to say so of a man so highly gifted, and in many 
respects so anxious for the welfare of his prople, his antipathy to 
religion grew stronger, or at least more ostentatious, every day. 
The Prince de Ligne, who was in attendance on the Emperor 
Joseph during Frederic's visit to him at Neustadt, in spite of all his 
admiration for the king, as 'one of the greatest men of the age,' 
could not help remarking that he overdid his parade of exultation 
at ' being doomed to everlasting fire.' ' Not to hint at the dis- 
honesty of the freethinkiag gentlemen,' who are very often 
thoroughly afraid of the devil,' it struck the prince as ' at least 
bad taste,' to boast, as he did, of his disbelief in a life to come, 
and. of the certainty of his own damnation, if there were such a 
being as a Supreme Judge. Though so entirely did his ardour in 
the cause of education overpower his antipathy to religion, that 
when Clement XIV., in 1773, suppressed the Order of Jesuits 
altogether, he gave them an asylum in Prussia, because he looked 
on them as peculiarly skilful in tuition. 

In his later years he was extremely popular among his subjects, 
mingling freely and affably with all classes, and encouraging them 
to seek access to him on all occasions. And his memory was 
naturally revered, and his example followed, by his nephew, who 

1 *For the disabled but uncon- ter of the Prince de Ligne to 
quered soldier.' Stanislaus, dated 1785. — Memoires 

2 ' Messieurs les esprits forts.' Let- e( Melanges historiques, i. 3. 



A.D. 1787.] CHARACTER OF SOUVAROF. 415 

succeeded him, Frederic III., to wtom he bequeathed a kingdom 
whose extent he had doubled, whose revenues he had trebled ; a 
treasury in which he had accumulated a large fund for future 
emergencies ; and an army of 200,000 men, inferior to no force in 
Europe in discipline, efficiency, and reputation. If he can in no 
respect be regarded as a good man, it is not easy, looking at him 
in his public capacity alone, as warrior and statesman, to deny 
that he was a great king. 

Unfortunately, together with his military and financial re- 
sources, he had bequeathed to his successor his grasping ambition 
and unscrupulous spirit of aggression, while, if the military skill 
which had guided the Prussian armies seemed for a time to have 
departed with himself, the want, in the next and more deadly 
attack upon Poland, was supplied by Russia, whose good fortune 
found the greatest soldier wliom as yet she had ever produced, 
Souvarof, in her ranks at the very moment when she had the 
most urgent need of military capacity in her generals that had 
ever pressed upon her since the time of the great Peter Souvarof 
was old enough to have won distinction as a field officer in the 
Seven Years' War ; but after the accession of Catharine, promo- 
tion was slow in the Russian army for any officer who was not 
recommended by beauty of person, and Souvarof's ugliness of 
features was remarkable even for one of his countrymen ; so that 
he was more than forty before he was promoted to the rank of 
general. Nor was it till 1787, when he was nearly sixty years of 
age, that, on the occasion of the Turks declaring war against his 
mistress and the Emperor, he received the command-in-chief of an 
army. Such a post was never entrusted to a stranger commander. 
He afi"ected the character of a jester, alike with the Empress, to 
whom he wrote important despatches in doggrel rhyme,^ and with 
the common soldiers, whom he would drill in person, stripped 
to his shirt, and himself going through the manual exercise 
which he was teaching them, varying his lessons in the use of 
the bayonet with horseplay and rude jokes, and even allowing 
those who were brave and skilful to pass jests upon himself; a 
practice of which men in authority, however jocose themselves, 
are not always tolerant. He at once showed himself equally 
skilful in the conduct of sieges and of battles iu the open field : 
since the great day of Zenta, no heavier blow had been dealt the 

' When he took Juterkai, a fortress iu Bulgaria, he reported his success to 
the Empress in four lines : 

Slava Boga, Glorj' to God, 

Slava vam : Glory to you : 

Juterkai vzala, Juterkai is taken, 

I ya tam. I am there. 



416 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1789. 

Turks than his victory on the Eimniks ; where, after a long contest, 
] 00,000 Turks fled before a fifth of their number of Russians and 
Austrians, a triumph of which the credit was entirely his own; for 
the Austrian division, under the unskilful Prince of Coburg, though 
more numerous than that of the Russians, was completely beaten, 
and was only saved from destruction through the skilful tactics and 
fiery intrepidity by which at last Souvarof changed the fortune of the 
day. And the eighteenth century, fertile as it had been in examples 
of blockades, assaults, and storms, beheld no more brilliant exploit 
of the kind than the capture of the great Turkish fortress of Ismail. 
As the key of the Lower Danube, it had been fortified with all the 
devices of modern art, for which the Turks had not trusted to their 
own officers; but had sought the services of a Spanish engineer of 
deserved celebrity. Two thick and lofty walls surrounded the town, 
with two wide and deep ditches, into which the waters of the 
Danube could be admitted in a few moments, so as to render them 
impassable : the ramparts bristled with above 300 guns : and they 
were garrisoned by more than 30,000 men, the very flower of the 
Saltan's army. A powerful squadron was stationed in the river, 
which was commanded for some miles on either side of the town 
by well-placed and well-armed batteries. . 

Such a place might well have been looked upon as impregna- 
ble to any force that an assailant whose resources were as distant 
as those of Russia could bring against it. Yet, with one inferior 
in numbers to the garrison, Souvarof took it in less than a week. 
Catharine's latest lover, Prince Potemkin, had, in October 1790, 
assumed the supreme command of all the forces employed against 
Turkey, and on the eleventh of December he sent orders to 
Souvorof; couched in terms as memorable for their brevity as 
for their sternness, enjoying him to take Ismail whatever might 
be the cost.^ Before Christmas his order was obeyed ; Souvarof, 
hastened to the Danube with 30,000 men, and every day witnessed 
the achievement of some important success. One day the Turkish 
squadron was overpowered by a flotilla of boats which the in- 
defatigable Russian obtained from the towns higher up the 
Danube. Another day the batteries on the banks of the river 
were taken and destroyed. Having thus rendered himself master 
of all the ground surrounding and commanding the town, Souvarof 
began, in his turn, to construct batteries, and furnaces for heating 
the shot, in imitation of those with which Eliott had so recently 
defended Gibraltar. And, on the twenty-second, only eight days 

^ 'La lettre du prince Potemkin prendrez Ismail a quel prix que ce 

s?t tres-courte. Elle jaeint le carac- soit." ' — Hist, de la Nouvelle-Iiussie, 

tere des deux personnages. La p. 205. 
i'oici dans toute sa teneur : " Vous 



A.D. 1790.] ISMAIL IS STOEMED. 417 

after he had come in sight of the fortress, he prepared for the 
grand attack. His orders to his troops were as concise as those 
which he had himself received from Potemkin ; and even more 
undisguised in their ferocity. ' My brothers,' with this name or 
that of * My children,' it was his habit to address his men, * My 
brothers, no quarter, provisions are dear.' Undoubtedly they 
would have received no quarter from their enemies, but the 
reasons which would have prompted the cruelty of the Infidel 
were less sordid than those with which this Christian chief sought 
to rouse the avarice as well as the barbarity of his followers. They 
were worthy of him in cruelty as well as in audacity. In all 
operations of war, his main reliance was on celerity of movement, 
and on the multiplication of his attacks in every quarter at the 
same time. And now, even before the day broke, the batteries 
began to pour their red-hot shot on the devoted town. There had 
been no time to breach the walls ; but at eight different points, 
where either some slight damage had been done by the previous 
cannonade, or where from some other cause the ramparts seemed 
most assailable, eight storming parties mounted to the assault. 
Turks have always fought gallantly behind walls ; and on this 
occasion they did not belie their character for stubborn braver3^ 
Assault after assault was repulsed. So great was the slaughter in 
the Russian ranks that Souvarof dismounted some regiments of 
cavalry, and drove hussars and dragoons on foot to the chai-ge. 
They, too, were beaten back more than once ; at last, almost de- 
spairing of success, he seized a standard, and in person, leading on 
a fresh storming party, planted the flag on a Turkish battery. 
Tlie Turks fell back in dismay before such heroic intrepidity : his 
own men, encouraged as much as the garrison was daunted, rushed 
on to his support with an impetuosity that at last was irresistible ; 
and, after thirteen hours of incessantfighting, whichhad begun hours 
before the sun rose, and was protracted long after it had set, the 
town was won. It was a splendid exploit. Had it been adorned 
with mercy to the conquered, it might have vied with the most 
brilliant achievements of the kind that the annals of war can 
show. But the general's fierce edict of destruction had been issued 
to troops as merciless as himself : and the Russian regiments now 
poured into the streets with no object but that of indiscriminate 
slaughter, in which women and children were as little spared 
as the armed and blood-stained soldier. The Turks did not ask 
quarter. Many rushed on the Russian swords or bayonets, looking 
on instant death as more tolerable than submission ; many of less 
hardy courage, but of equal despair, plunged into the Danube, and 
were unresistingly overwhelmed beneath its turbulent waves. 
In the assault and the subsequent massacre not fewer than 



118 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1790. 

31,000 Turks perished : they did not fall unavenged. So heavy 
had been the loss of the Uussians themselves that they took un- 
usual pains to conceal its magnitude. But it gradually became 
known that at least 10,000 men, one-third of the besieging army, had 
also fallen. Heavy, hovt^ever, as this loss was, it neither diminished 
the exultation with which the capture of so important a fortress was 
received by the Empress, nor the reputation which it gave the 
victorious general throughout Europe ; and when, four years after- 
wards, he was placed at the head of the army sent to act against 
Poland, it was at once taken for gi*anted that his presence in com- 
mand was sufBcient to make resistance hopeless, even had his 
force not been, as it was, overwhelming in number. 

It was not without considerable cessions that Turkey could 
obtain peace, which was finally concluded, at Jassy, in the first 
month of 17^2. But the war was as unfortunate for Poland as 
for the Porte, since the knowledge of the Russian armies being so 
fully engaged in the south, and the belief that the war would be 
a long one, emboldened the Polish statesmen, and for almost the 
first time in her history Poland had men worthy of the name, 
to adopt a domestic policy and measures of reform, which Catharine 
made a pretext for a fresh attack upon the country, that ended in 
its extinction as an independent state. 

Whichever power was the proposer of the original partition, it 
is beyond a doubt that the second, which indeed was not a parti- 
tion, but a complete destruction, was the work of Russia. Prussia 
was, indeed, a willing accomplice ; and on this occasion, gave the 
first instance of that treachery which, in after years, tainted her 
grasping policy with a still deeper disgrace ; concluding, as late 
as the spring of 1790, a formal treaty with Poland, by which she 
bound herself to come to her assistance if any ' other Power should 
claim a right of interfering in her internal affairs,' and still more, 
' if hostilities should ensue ,• ' and, at the very moment that the 
treaty was signed, making arrangements to induce the Poles to 
cede to her Dantzic and Thurn ; and to seize upon them by force 
should Stanislaus refuse to strip his kingdom of cities of such 
importance. But in the first steps which were taken Austria bore 
no part. Maria Teresa had died in 1780, leaving behind her a 
character for energetic patriotism and enlightened humanity, on 
which her share in the first dismemberment of Poland is the only 
stain. Ten years afterwards she was followed to the grave by her 
eldest son, the Emperor Joseph, whose blind reverence for the 
exploits of Frederic had probably had no small share in wringing 
from her her consent to that spoliation. And his successor, his 
brother Leopold II., made the establishment and maintenance of 
peace the keystone of his policy, and was therefore unalterably 



A.D. 1791.] HEFOEMS IX POLAND. 419 

averse to provoliing an unnecessary war by wanton attacks on 
others. 

But ever since 1772 the policy of Russia had been steadily 
directed to the object of extending- her encroachments in Poland. 
By incessant intrigues, she had established an ascendency in the 
state council ; and she kept a large force on the borders which did 
not a,lways confine itself within its own territories. No Pole 
could be blind to her designs ; but it was a common belief that the 
overthrow of the Sultan and the conquest of Constantinople were 
objects still more desired by her than the conquest of Poland : 
and, as has just been mentioned, in the autumn of 1790, the Polish 
nobles themselves, thinldng that the concentration of her efforts 
on the Danube afforded them an opportunity for free action, which 
might not occur again, undertook the noble task of reforming 
their constitution : the leaders were in earnest ; they saw the 
necessity of union and promptitude ; but there was so little pre- 
cipitation in their rapidity that the new constitution, which was 
proclaimed at Warsaw on the third of May 1791, left little to be 
desired by a people who appreciated above all things their own 
freedom and independence, and who had no ambition to combine 
with these blessings anything that could be accounted dangerous 
or offensive by its neighbours. The crown was made hereditary ; 
the liherum veto was abolished : the state council, as a body, 
whose existence was a mere temptation to foreign intrigues, was 
suppressed, but a free repi-esentation of the people was substituted 
for it ; and judicious arrangements for a gradual extinction of 
serfdom were set on foot. It is no exaggeration to say that at that 
time in no other country of Europe but our own had a constitution 
been established which contained so great a promise of goodgovern- 
ment. It gave Poland tranquillity ; and if tranquil, she was still 
sufficiently powerful to have the means of prosperity within herself. 

But that she should be tranquil, prosperous, and powerful, was 
the very last thing which Russia desired. On the contrary, she had 
found and meant to find in the factious and divisions of the country 
a pretext for her constant interference, and the eventual establish- 
ment of her own authority ; and, even before she had terminated 
her warfare with the Porte, she showed her intention of treating 
the new Polish constitution as an insult to herself. Nor was 
faction so dead in the country but that some traitors to its best 
interests could be found willing to supply her with a pretext for 
once more interposing in its affairs. A smaU band still attached 
to the principles of elective monarchy and the veto, in the spring 
of 1792, formed a confederation to protest against their abolition ; 
and appealed to Catharine, as the protectress of the old constitution. 
She gladly received the appeal, which she had probably dictated ; 



420 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1791. 

and anuounced, in reply, that she would instantly march an army 
into Poland, to restore its liberties ; while the King of Prussia, though 
a year before he had openly expressed his warm approval of the 
act of 1791, now did not scruple to affirm that it was a revolution 
so complete and mischievous as of itself to release him from the 
treaty with Stanislaus which he had so recently concluded. The 
rapidity with which the Russians commenced operations, and the 
scale on which they were conducted, sufficiently showed the 
concert that had existed between Catharine and the malcontent 
nobles before they appealed to her. The existence of the con- 
federation was only announced on the twelfth of May, but before 
the end of the month 100,000 Russians entered Poland: and 
Stanislaus, bewildered by the magnitude of the danger, disbanded 
his army, and threw himself on Catharine's mercy, seeking to 
propitiate her by a proposal to appoint, as his successor, one of her 
grandsons, the archduke Constantine, a boy as yet only thirteen 
years of age. The mercy which he obtained consisted in a 
seizure of half of his remaining dominions, which were instantly 
divided between Russia and Prussia : the more extensive provinces 
being appropriated by the Empress ; but those which were com- 
mercially more valuable, as including the port of Dantzic and a 
long strip of the shore of the Baltic, being given to Prussia. Less 
than four millions of subjects were now left to Stanislaus; and 
though he could hardly flatter himself that this remnant of the 
people would long be allowed to retain their independence, he 
seems to have hoped to avert any farther blow from his own 
head, and in 1793 convoked a diet at Grodno, professedly to ratify 
the cession of two-thirds of his remaining dominions. 

He himself was intimidated, but those Poles who were worthy 
of the name were not so easily beaten down. Even though the 
diet was carefully packed, the chief framers and champions of the 
constitution of 1791 being rigorously excluded; though Grodno 
was surrounded by Russian bayonets; and though the Russian 
envoy did not spare the king himself the most sweeping threats, 
but announced his orders to seize even the royal domains if the diet 
demun-ed at executing the Empress's will without delay, it was not 
till the close of the year that he was able to obtain the vote which 
he required from a scanty majority; and, while the diet was thus 
gaining time, others of Poland's sons were organising a resistance 
which, as they hoped, should soon nullify the legislation of terror. 

General Thaddeus Kosciusko, a noble Lithuanian, in the prime 
of life, had learned the theory of war in France, under that most 
eccentric of all war ministers, the Count of St.-Germains ; he had 
acquired a practical experience of its duties in America, where he 
had served as a volunteer in the army with which Washington 



A.D. 179i.] PEEVIOUS CAEEEE OF KOSCIUSKO. 421 

taught our own generals tlie difference Tietween carrying on war 
in the soldiers' own country and waging it three thousand miles 
from their supplies and reinforcements; and, having returned to 
his own country, after the peace of Versailles, with a mind well 
stored with military science ; a heart deeply imbued with those 
principles of liberty and independence, of which he had witnessed 
the triumph in another hemisphere ; a courage proof against 
dangers ; and a patriotic firmness invincible alike to threats and 
temptations, he had eagerly taken arms for his country in the 
brief campaign of 1792 5 and, as the commander of a small force of 
4,000 men, had distinguished himself in several actions : on one 
occasion keeping at bay a force more than three times as numerous 
as his owTi, throughout an entire day, and, under cover of the 
night, withdrawing them with comparatively little damage. To 
him the eyes of those who had resolved to make one more effort 
to save their country naturally turned as thfeir leader. He was as 
zealous in the cause as they ; and his zeal made him even believe 
in the possibility of success. At the beginning of March 1794 he 
raised the standard of war at Cracow, and at once took the field, 
though he could not number above 5,000 followers, and many of 
them had neither the equipment nor the training of soldiers, but 
were rudely armed with scythes, hatchets, and other rustic 
weapons. Fortunately, however, as it seemed at first, the only 
Russian force at hand -was still weaker, being a mere brigade of 
3,000 men, whom he attacked and defeated wdth great slaughter 
at Wraslawice ; and this trivial success not only furnished his men 
with anns, but roused the enthusiasm of the whole people to such 
a degree that province now vied with province in the eagerness with 
which it proclaimed its resolution to expel the intruding spoilers 
from the country. At first Warsaw, the capital, had been kept down 
by the influence of the nobles in Catharine's interest, and of the king 
himself. But, the moment that the intelligence of Kosciusko's 
victory reached them, the citizens could no longer be restrained ; 
they joined in the movement, and fell upon a small combined force 
of Russians and Prussians, encamped under the walls to overawe 
all who were suspected of patriotism, drove them from their 
position with a loss of half their numbers, and, having thus cleared 
the district of foreign enemies, they poured down to the south to 
range themselves under Kosciusko's banner. Before May had 
passed his force was trebled ; and his next action, though unsuc- 
cessful, increased the excitement in his favour. Quick to perceive 
their danger, Russia and Prussia poured their armies on Warsaw ; 
and, in the first week of June, 40,000 of the allies fell on him and 
his army, which, though increased and rapidly increasing, did not 
exceed 15,000 men. In ordinary circumstances he would gladly 



422 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1794. 

have avoided a combat, for reinforcements, which would have 
placed the two armies on an equality, were on their way to join 
him ; but, in a war like that in which he was engaged, impression 
is everything", and to decline a combat often seems to imply greater 
weakness than to be defeated. As was inevitable, though he 
fought with admirable skill and great tenacity, he was at last 
beaten back ; but he had prepared an entrenched camp, in which 
for above two months he kept his enemies at bay, till, at last, they 
retreated, abandoning all attempt to force their way into Warsaw 
while the lion-hearted general covered it. But the time during 
which he thus remained besieged in his camp, though, honorably 
employed by the bulk of his countrymen, was ruinous to them. 
It gave time for the flame of resistance to spread; and the different 
captains, who were raising troops to join him, before the end of 
September had collected nearly 80,000 men. But, on the other 
hand, it also gave the Russians time to bring up the skilful and 
dreaded Souvarof; and the ill-equipped Polish levies were no 
match for his veterans. As usual, he lost not an hour : he fell 
upon division after division, driving all before him, and dealing 
the heaviest blows on those who made the stoutest resistance; 
and Kosciusko, who had moved up to Warsaw to defend the 
capital from another Russian army whicli was threatening it, saw 
himself, at the beginning of October, obliged to attack that force, 
lest, on Souvarof 's arrival, he should be crushed between the two. 
His own army was but slightly weaker in numbers, but was so 
greatly inferior in every other circumstance on which the efficiency 
of an army depends, that, after a stubborn conflict, he was utterly 
defeated. All that the most self-devoted courage could do to 
avert the disaster, he did ; and, when he saw defeat was inevitable, 
he, with his staff, plunged into the thickest of the fight, apparently 
hoping by death at least to escape the harder fate of witnessing the 
enslavement of his whole country, which he foresaw. But those 
who thus seek death rarely find it : he was struck down, and, 
severely wounded, was taken. It was said that, when he found 
himself in the hands of his enemies, he murmured a few faint 
words, that there was an end of Poland ; and they were speedily 
verified. But a few days elapsed before Souvarof himself reached 
the scene of action, and at once invested Warsaw, into which the 
relics of Kosciusko's army, and all the different divisions which he 
himself had defeated on his march, had thrown themselves. They 
r.aised the numbers of the garrison to 26,000 men : his troops did 
not, probably, reach double that number, but they were flushed 
with the recollection of unvaried victory. The Poles were without 
a leader, and again divided by intestine quarrels. Even while 
Kosciusko led their armies the ruinous spirit of faction had broken 



A.D. 1791.] THE STOrOONG OF PEAGA. 423 

out, and he had found his own countrymen more formidable than 
the Russians. Discomfiture and despair naturally increased their 
jealousies, and not a few opened communications with Souvarof as 
soon as he came in sight. The main body of the soldiers were, 
however, true to the cause of their country, and, even when all 
hope was gone, made a stout resistance j but their gallantry 
only exasperated their assailant, and gave him some pretext, if, 
indeed, the slaughterer of the garrison of Ismail needed a pretext, 
for the indulgence of his savage cruelty. His operations were 
even more rapid than those on the Danube. Coming up from the 
south-east, he reached the city on the side of Praga, a large suburb 
on the right bank of the Vistula, and connected by several bridges 
with Warsaw itself. It was not till the second of November that 
he came under its walls ; a single day sufficed him to erect batteries 
and to breach the rampart, which, in many places, was decayed; 
and, on the fourth, he stormed the city with his whole army. A 
fearful scene ensued ; most of the houses in Praga were made of 
wood ; they soon took fire ; the flames spread to the bridges, which 
were of the same material, and equally prevented the garrison of 
Praga from retreating and the troops in Warsaw from coming to 
their assistance. Thousands were burnt; thousands threw them- 
selves into the river, and were drowned : and Souvarof 's soldiers, 
ordered, as at Ismail, to give no quarter, slaughtered everyone 
who fell into their hand, speaceful citizens, women, and children, 
sparing neither sex nor age, till the number of those who perished, 
in Praga alone, exceeded 30,000. The destruction of the bridges 
saved Warsaw itself from instant assault, and, before they could 
be repaired, the king capitulated. His submission did not save 
him. Catharine, who took the decision of aU matters relating to 
Poland into her own hands, compelled him to sign his abdication 
of the throne, on which she had formerly placed him ; and, even 
before the deed was drawn, she had left him no territories to 
resign. Of what remained to Poland since 1792 she appropriated 
the greater portion herself; the western provinces, with Warsaw, 
were given to Prussia; and, as the successor of the Emperor 
Leopold, who had died in 1792, Francis II., did not inherit his 
indifference to acquisitions of territory, Austria received Cracow 
and the districts nearest to Gallicia ; and, as Kosciusko had said, 
Poland had come to an end. 

The distribution of Polish territory was not permanent. In the 
unparalleled disturbances of the next twenty years the country 
and the rights of its people were treated by the great wamor and 
unscrupulous statesman who had made himself the master of con- 
tinental Europe, sometimes as a plaything, sometimes as a bait, 
till all hopes which the most sanguine patriots could have enter- 



424 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d, 1794. 

tained of re-establishing the independence of any portion were 
rendered more desperate than ever by the transference to Russia 
of several of the provinces formerly allotted to her accomplices. 
And though the outrageous tyranny of the Russian Archduke, 
Constantine, who governed it as viceroy, did eventually drive a 
large portion of the people into revolt and insurrection, the en- 
deavour ended, as it was from the first inevitable that it should 
end, in the ruin of all concerned in it ; and in rivetting the chains 
which bound down the nation more firmly than ever. 

Poland was not crushed without her fate exciting a warm sym-* 
pathy in other countries, and in none a deeper and warmer feeling 
than in England : and one who deservedly ranks among the most 
popular poets of the present century, bewailed her fate the more 
earnestly because, as he affirmed, she fell 'without a crime.'* 
But a statesman cannot take the same view of her innocence aa 
the minstrel, for, in truth, the Poles' innate insubordination of 
temper, their impatience of all restraints of law and authority, 
their mutual jealousies and intestine quarrels had long made them 
a standing cause of disquietude and anxiety to all their neigh- 
bours. And these defects of character do constitute a grave 
ofi^ence against the commonwealth of nations. The Poles prided 
themselves upon being a nation of cavaliers. But among the 
graceful virtues of chivalry Burke truly places ' a generous loyalty, 
a proud submission, a dignified obedience, which keeps alive,' 
even in the most adverse circumstances, ' the spirit of an exalted 
freedom.' And such feelings were at no period of her history ac- 
knowledged in Poland. Not knowing how to obey, she was inca- 
pable of enjoying true liberty; and by her frantic efforts to grasp 
the phantom of equality which she mistook for it, she turned all 
Europe against her : not only her aggressive neighbours, who pro- 
fited by her ruin, but even those who, though their situation 
debarred them from sharing her spoils, could hardly regret the 
extinction of a nation which was a constant source of intrigue 
and mutual ill-will among other states. . And so clear is this that 
one of the most dispassionate and judicious of historical critics 
shows an inclination to pronounce, that ' after all, the situation of 
Poland was such as almost to afford an exception, perhaps a single 
exception, to those general rules of justice that are so essential to 
the great community of nations.'^ 

Stanislaus did not long survive the ruin of his kingdom. 
Catharine had so entirely forgotten her former feelings of regard 
hv him that she treated him personally with great severity, allow- 

1 Oh, bloodiest picture in the book of Time, 

Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime. 

Campbell, Pleasures of Hope, i. 375. 
- Professor Smyth's Lectures on Modern History, Lecture 29. 



A.D. 1794.] DEATH OF KOSCIUSKO. 425 

ing him, indeed, a small pension, but refusing him any of the 
honours usually paid to fallen royalty, and forbidding the people 
of Grodno, where he -was ordered to live, to treat him with more 
respect than was shown to any ordinary citizen. He died in 
1798; and was forgotten even before he was dead. Kosciusko, 
as his exertions for his country and his resistance to her enemies 
had been more formidable, was treated at first with greater severity. 
Even before his wounds were healed, he was sent to St. Peters- 
burg, and confined in one of the dungeons of ordinary criminals ; 
and there, while Catharine lived, he remained. Her son and 
successor, Paul, as ferocious as herself, but capricious both in his 
cruelty and occasional fits of humanity, released him ; and after 
a year or two, spent in travelling in England and revisiting 
America, he settled in France ; but steadily abstained from taking 
any part in public affairs. In the height of his hostility to 
Russia, Napoleon tried to profit by his residence in his dominions, 
using his name to excite the Poles to revolt and join him in the 
campaign which ended in Friedland and Tilsit, even going to the 
length of forging proclamations in his name, addressed to his 
countrymen : and after Napoleon's fall, Alexander, hoping per- 
haps thus to reconcile the Poles to his authority, invited him to 
return to his native land. But he was as little inclined to be made a 
tool of by one despot as another ; and remained in France till his 
death in 1817, Then, at last, he returned to the country which he 
loved so well and served so zealously. His remains were con- 
veyed to Cracow, and buried with great solemnity by the side of 
Sobieski, the last of the Polish kings whom the nation could 
remember with pride, or regard as a fitting companion for him. 
By those of his countrymen who still cling to the name of Poles 
his memory is still cherished with affectionate reverence: in no 
land is it mentioned without respect ; and, perhaps, a gi-ettter en- 
couragement to others may be derived from the fact of this 
homage being paid to one whose proudest hopes were baffled, 
whose most vigorous exertions were defeated, than if it were a 
recognition of the most unvarying triumph. For that Catharine 
should now be execrated and Kosciusko reverenced is a testimony 
as striking as events can aiFord : that, however fortune may for a 
time smile on the unworthy and depress the virtuous, posterity and 
liistory redress the balance ; and, rising above the influences of the 
piipsing hour and the delusions of success, reserve their durable 
])raises and admiration for humanity and courage and the un- 
selfish devotion of patriotism.* 

' The authorities for this chapter son's History of Europe, vol. iii , the 

are the different Memoirs of Fred- Memoirs of the Prince de Ligne, and 

eric the Groat, Coxe's Eovse of Rulpiere's Histoire de VAnarchie de, 

Ajtstria, The Annual Register for la Pologne. 
the years 1771, 1772, 1791-94, All- 




426 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1774. 



CHAPTER XIX. 
A.D. 1774—1789. 

LOUIS XV., as we have seen, had not been free from fore- 
bodings that a crop of heavy troubles was ripening throughout 
France during his reign, which it would be difficult for his suc- 
cessor to avoid reaping. It had been ia no small degree strength- 
ened in its growth by his own vices ; to which no stronger con- 
trast could possibly have been afforded than that which was 
presented to them by the virtuous purity of his grandson, Louis 
XVI. He himself had been steeped in every kind of wickedness, 
and the women about the court who cajoled him out of his 
authority were such that their influence was felt to be a degrada- 
tion to the whole country. Very different were the young king 
and queen whom his death placed on the throne. No man with 
purer mind, more sincere humanity, or more earnest zeal for the 
welfare of his subjects, had ever swayed a sceptre in any country. 
As far as the happiness of a people depended on the personal vir- 
tues and purity of intention of the sovereign, it might have been 
expected to be fully secured. Unhappily, though singularly free 
from vices, Louis XVI. had many defects ; and it may almost be 
doubted whether even the profligacy of the grandfather accelerated 
the downfall of the monarchy more than the weakness of his suc- 
cessor. In such a court as that of France it was even of some 
importance that Louis XVI. did not look like a king. His gi'and- 
father, while a young man, had been eminently handsome : and 
had always a royal dignity and courtesy of manner : he knew 
when to be stately and when to be affable ; but Louis XVI. was 
awkward both in person and demeanour ; his figure was heavy, 
his gait w^as slouching, his voice thin and squeaking ; in his 
Tnanners he was reserved, or even shy, and incurably taciturn ; in 
lis dress he was slovenly, and not even always clean. One of his 
favourite amusements was working a blacksmith's forge, and he 
constantly presented himself, even in the queen's apartments, when 
she was suiTOunded by her ladies, begrimed with soot, and reeking 
with perspiration like an ordinary mechanic. Matters such as 



A.1). 1774.] MARIE ANTOINETTE. 427 

these, never unimportant at courts, had especial influence in the 
eyes of a people so addicted to pomp and parade as the French. 
And he had even graver defects than these. He had a singular 
incapacity for appreciating the talents and characters and views 
of those with whom he had to deal, and the importance of events. 
He had neither self-reliance to form opinions, nor firmness to adhere 
to those which he had adopted ; and this weakness of character 
inevitably made the new court as much a scene of inti'igue and 
faction as it had been in the preceding reign. In a happier age 
his deficiencies of every kind might have been less remarked, his 
virtues might have made a greater impression; he might have 
earned the blessings of his subjects and the grateful recollectioia 
of posterity as a good king. It was his misfortune that he came 
to the throne at a time when hardly a great king could have 
successfully grappled with the difficulties that surrounded it; and 
■ of greatness he had no element in his composition. 

Very difiea-ent, except in the purity of her life and the benevo- 
lence of her intentions, was his queen, Marie Antoinette, the 
youngest daughter of Maria Teresa. In person she was handsome 
and stately ; in her manners a princely dignity was happily com- 
bined with an innocent simplicity of taste and condescending 
kindness to all who approached her. Her apprehension was quick ; 
her character fearless, energetic, and resolute. Devoted to her 
husband and her adopted country, full of eager humanity and 
sympathy for his people, she lacked nothing but that sobriety and 
soundness of judgment which could hardly be looked for in a prin- 
cess who was not yet nineteen years of age ; but of which her occa- 
sional want led her into mistakes which in some instances had a 
prejudicial influence on her husband's fortunes. She had a desire, 
prompted perhaps by a recollection of the vigorous rule of her 
mother, and by a forgetfulness of the fact that Maria Teresa was a 
sovereign in her own right, to exercise a leading influence on the 
political affidrs of the kingdom ; and aware, as she could hardly 
fail to be, of her superiority to Louis, in force botli of intellect and 
character, she began to exert and display her power over him from 
the first day of her accession to the throne. She succeeded in 
persuading him to dismiss his grandfather's ministers, who were, 
indeed, quite unfit to direct the destinies of the nation ; thougb 
she was baifled by the intrigues of his aunts in her endeavours to 
nominate their successors. And thus she at once brought into 
view the fact that there were two parties in the court and in the 
royal family itself, and made herself a mark for the hostility of 
one of them. Her arrangement of what may be called domestic 
matters, though strictly within her own province, excited even 
more general discontent. The home of the great Empress-queen 



i28 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.b. 1774. 

at Schonbrunn, where she had been brought up, had been distin- 
guished from that of other sovereigns by an almost total absence 
of parade; and Marie Antoinette had brought with her a prefer- 
ence for the unaffected manners and simple pleasures of her 
mother's court over the theatrical and tedious etiquette which had 
chilled the halls of Versailles from their first foundation. "While 
only dauphiness she had been forced to repress her own taste, but 
on becoming queen she resolved to gratify it ; and at once began 
to abridge the pompous and extravagant ceremonies of the court, 
which had been established during the last two reigns. 

She could hardly have given greater offence. A large party, 
as was natural, regretted the change of ministry, and imputed to 
her not only the dismissal of the minister whom they regretted, 
but the appointment of his successor, in which she had been out- 
witted and overruled. But for one person in France who cared 
who was minister, hundreds regarded the length of the trains to 
be worn at court, and the question who should sit on chairs, 
who on stools, and who should not presume to sit at all in the 
royal apartments, as matters of vital importance. The courtiers 
united with the politicians in ill-will to one who made so light 
of their prejudices ; and the malice even of persons so despicable 
was not powerless. To a large portion of the people her marriage 
itself had been unpalatable, as a confirmation of that alliance with 
Austria which had borne no pleasant fruit in the Seven Years' 
War, and which was a plain departure from the old principles of 
policy adopted by Henry IV., Richelieu, and Louvois, which had 
led to so many triumphs. And, in retaliation for her own jests 
on pomp and etiquette, the malcontents nicknamed Marie An- 
toinette ' the Austrian ; ' and the name itself reciprocally breeding 
a belief, than which none was ever more false, that she preserved 
a preference for the interests of her native land over those of her 
adopted country, there came a day when it had no slight share in 
producing the bitterest calamities to herself and to all connected 
with her. 

Thus, almost from the first, both king and queen were un- 
popular ; and there never had been a time when it was more 
desirable that they should be supported by the affections of an 
united people. For not even at the beginning of the late reign 
was the state surrounded with such difficulties and dangers as 
required instant attention now. The finances were in a state of 
inextricable disorder, if not of hopeless bankruptcy : the destitution 
of the lower classes in the towns, and, in the agricultural district,?, 
of all but the very highest, was imiversal and insupportable. The 
discontent was, as a matter of course, coextensive with the dis- 
tress : ajid, even of those who were not exasperated by personal 



A.D. 1774.] EESTOEATION OF THE PARLIAMENT. 429 

privations, three most influential classes were as bitter enemies of 
the government as those whose animosity was sharpened by star- 
vation. The lawyers were indignant at the recent suppression of 
the parliaments : the clergy resented the expulsion of the Jesuits : 
while the literary men were hostile to all institutions which, by 
their mere existence, seemed to stand in the way of their theories, 
whether political or religious, which they were bent on propaga- 
ting. To deal with the affairs, so full of peril and anxiety, re- 
quired something more than amiability in the monarch. It 
required a clear-headed man, a bold man, a firm man. And Louis 
was so far from being endowed with even the most ordinary de- 
gree of these qualities that he could not avail himself of even the 
few favorable circumstances which might have facilitated his 
task. As we have seen, Louis XV. had abolished the parliaments. 
The act had certainly not been dictated by statesmanlike motives ; 
but no measure more calculated for the maintenance of tranquillity 
could have been adopted. For, for centuries, the parliaments had 
been hotbeds of faction and sedition, constantly aiming to en- 
croach on the royal authority, and affording a rallying poiot for 
all the malcontents of the kingdom. Yet before the end of the 
year Louis XVI. restored them : and, what was hardly less mis- 
chievous than the act itself was the circumstance that he did soy 
not only against the advice of his ablest ministers, and against the 
strongest remonstrances of his brother the heir presumptive,, but 
against his own convictions, in compliance with the entreaties of 
the queen herself. It was an evil augury for his reign that he 
should thus make public, at the very outset, that he had not 
stability of mind to adhere to his own opinion ai^d the advice of 
his wisest councillors on matters the importance of which he did 
not disguise from himself. 

Another piece of singular good fortune befell him in the open- 
ing of his reign, which also he had not the sense and resolution to 
preserve. The new prime minister, Maurepas, at all times inca- 
pable, and now superannuated, for he had begun his official life 
under Louis XIV., had felt the necessity of procuring efficient 
assistance to the government from some new quarter ; and, learn- 
ing that M. Turgot, the intendant of the Limousin, had not only 
brought that province to an exceptional degree of prosperity, but 
had made himself popular among and respected by all classes of 
the people, he removed him to Paris, placing him, first, at the head 
of the marine, from which, after a week or two, he was trans- 
ferred to the office of the controller-general of the finances. 
He soon proved himself the ablest financier that France had 
ever had ; endowed with a wider knowledge than Sully, with a 
more comprehensive glance than Colbert. But he was something 



430 MODERK HISTORY. U-d. 1774. 

more than a financier ; he was a statesman : not, like Richelieu, 
looking on statesmanship as best employed in making and sub- 
duing enemies, in planning and executing conquests; but con- 
sidering its most honorable as well as most useful occupation to 
lie in domestic government ; in the reform of abuses, so that they 
should not revive ; in putting the difierent departments of the 
state on a sound footing ; in emancipating the working classes 
from burdens which kept them down without benefitting any 
other class ; in relieving both the home and foreign trade from 
needless shackles. And he had such confidence in the amplitude 
of the resources of the country, that he believed it possible, critical 
as the state of affairs was, to bring it back to at least the prosperity 
which it enjoyed under Fleury. No reformer can escape cabals 
against him : no enforcer of economy can fail to make enemies. 
And though Louis and Marie Antoinette cordially co-operated 
with him in the reduction of the expenses, or rather of the waste- 
fulness of the court, Louis even refusing to accept the large sum 
of money which it had been customary to oifer to a sovereign on 
his accession,^ the courtiers were furious. They filled the saloons 
of Versailles with libels on the honest minister, whose honesty 
was not only a reproach to themselves, but a reduction of their 
gains. The parliament, whose restoration he had opposed in a 
most convincing memorial, thwarted all his measures to the utmost 
of their power ; on one occasion even exciting formidable riots in 
Paris, when the price of bread rose, and the rise was attributed to 
his removal of some of the impediments to a free ti-ade in corn. 
So clearly did such an outbreak menace all authority that Turgot 
was able to persuade Louis to send down troops to quell it ; and it 
jaa.j be that the violence which such an order, however indispensa- 
ble, did to the king's feelings, tended in some degree to weaken his 
attachment to the minister, whose wisdom he constantly ac- 
knowledged, and whom he repeatedly assured of his unshrinking 
support. But another measure roused up against Turgot a still 
more formidable enemy, before whom at last he fell, though he 
probably had given no advice more completely in accordance with 
the feelings and views of propriety of Louis himself. In the 
summer of 1775, the king was crowned, at Rheims, with great 
solemnity and magnificence, and Turgot earnestly recommended 
the removal from the coronation oath of the undertaking ' to exter- 
minate heretics.' The v/hole body of the clergy, and especially 
those of the highest rank, took the alarm. They even drew up a 
remonstrance to Louis, in which they traced many of the e^ils 
of the state to the toleration which the Huguenots had latterly 

• Called 'Le don de joyeux aveDement.' 



A.D. 1776.] DISMISSAL OF TURGOT. 431 

enjoyed. Nothing was so distasteful to Louis as religious persecu- 
tion : and he might well have been excused from paying any atten- 
tion to the clerical remonstrance, for, as if those who framed it had 
designed to throw ridicule on it, of the three prelates who were 
deputed to present it, one, the Abbe of Talleyrand Perigord, 
though but a youth, was already known as one of the most dis- 
solute men in France ; another, Lomenie de Brie -ne, archbishop 
of Toulouso, was an avowed unbeliever. 

Yet the new attack greatly shook the king's resolution to up- 
hold the minister : and presently his enemies formed a new ground 
of attack which coincided with one of his own prejudices. Fully 
aware that the evils which menaced the kingdom were too deeply 
seated to be eradicated by partial reforms in a few details, Turgot 
conceived the idea of one great comprehensive constitutional reform. 
Hitherto, as he truly urged, in an elaborate memorial, which he sub- 
mitted to his royal master, France had had no constitution at all. 
He aspired to give her one ; and he drew up an elaborate scheme, 
which should put the financial aiTangements and the whole legisla- 
tive system of the kingdom on a new and sound footing ; abolishing 
many of the old customs and regulations which, though originally 
intended for the protection of trade, had been found, in their prac- 
tical working, to be the greatest restraints upon and impediments 
to its development : and providing for the erection of a great legis- 
lative assembly, whose authority, though he had not as yet defined 
its precise limits, nor its mode of operation, would be a support to 
honest ministers, a check on incompetent or corrupt ones, and in 
both respects an efficient aid and trustworthy bulwark to the crown 
itself. But the latter part of his scheme he was not allowed time 
to complete in his own mind, much less to explain. As soon as 
the first details of his plan were known, his enemies, among whom 
were some of his own colleagues, persuaded Louis that he was 
seeking to establish English principles of government ; and there 
was no feeling so rooted in the king's mind as a dislike of England, 
and English customs, which he identified to a great extent with 
the school of philosophers among his own subjects who were con- 
tinually extolling them. When Turgot tried to stimulate his 
firmness in support of proposals whicn he had previously sanc- 
tioned, for Louis had not himself discerned their peculiarly En- 
glish character, and to draw warnings from the example of 
Charles I. of England who, as the minister read his history, had 
perished through his want of that most kingly and statesmanlike 
virtue, Louis regarded his exhortations, so enforced, almost in the 
light of a menace, and secretly resented them. And shortly 
afterwards sent him a curt letter of dismissal ; which, though it 
looked like an act of studied discourtesy, was probably dictated 



432 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1781. 

by the shy timidity which rendered the king averse to confront 
anyone. Had he lived he would probably have subsequently 
been restored to his post ; but he died not long time afterwards ; 
and with his fall every chance for the prosperity of the kingdom, 
if not for the preservation of the monarchy itself, was extinguished. 
Shortlived as his administration had been, he had made great pro- 
gress in relievuig the treasury from its pecuniary embarrassments. 
He had greatly diminished the national debt, and lowered the 
interest of money. He had pointed out to those who might suc- 
ceed him with unimpeachable clearness the course by which, and 
by which alone, the state could be relieved from its present dif- 
ficulties. But among the numerous ministers who in the course 
of the next thirteen years filled his oifice, not one was capable of 
taking an equally large view of all the circumstances of the nation ; 
and but one was influenced by public spirit or made the least 
pretence to either public or personal integrity. 

Neoker, who succeeded to his post before the end of the year, 
and who had previously been a Parisian banker, was indeed honest 
well intentioned, and possessed of a considerable knowledge of 
finance. He to a certain extent adopted Turgot's principles, and 
followed out the system on what that minister had begun to act ; 
and certainly during his tenure of office, which lasted for five years, 
he made great progress, though far iess than he boasted, in reliev- 
ing the treasury from its pecuniary difficulties. But he was vain, 
devoted to the pursuit of popularity ; and, like all such persons, 
vacillating and changeable; he was narrow minded, incapable, 
perhaps from his early training, of conceiving that any political 
considerations were of equal importance with questions of finance ; 
and he was so prone to place implicit belief in abstract theories 
as to overlook the difficulties in the way of their practical adoption 
which either past experience or the slightest insight into human 
character suggested. He resigned in 1781, anticipating the dis- 
missal which he foresaw that the cabals of his enemies prepared 
for him : and aware that he also had alienated the king himself 
by his undisguised approval of many parts of the English system 
of government. But seven years afterwards Louis recalled him, 
because, even he could not avoid perceiving the incompetency and^ 
corruption of all the successors whom he had given him, except 
Calonne. And Calonne, though a man of great natural ability, of 
prompt fertility of resource, and of great coui-age, had been so 
wasteful, so unscrupulous, and so negligent in the performan6e of 
his duties; had so completely limited his objects to eluding and 
postponing difficulties, instead of grappling with and mastering 
them, that his administration had been in fact more disastrous to 
the state than that of any other previous minister during the reign. 



A.D. 1778.] TREATY WITH THE AMERICANS. 433 

Necker had undoubtedly overrated liis own abilities, and exagge- 
rated bis achievements ; but, even had his success in improving 
the financial arrangements of the kingdom been as great as he 
affirmed, it would have been neutralised by the policy of the 
only minister among his colleagues who had any definite views, 
except that of enriching himself at the expense of the state, or 
any capacity for administration, the Count de Vergennes. He 
was the secretary for foreign affairs ; and, as such, regarded the 
civil war which, before Turgot's dismissal from ofliee, had broken 
out between Britain and her colonies in North America, not only 
with deep interest, but with an earnest desire to aid the colonists, 
and he pressed upon Louis his advice to conclude a treaty of alliance 
with the Americans, as a measure which would afibrd him an 
opportunity of retrieving the losses and discredit of which France 
had incurred from the Seven Years' War, and the treaty of 1763. 
Louis was in a great strait : he hated England ; but he had sufii- 
cient penetration to perceive that the dangerous spirit which he 
already knew to exist among a portion of his own subjects could 
not fail to be fostered and ercouraged by the example of successful 
insurrection against a neighbouring sovereign, especially if its 
success should in any degree be attributable to their assistance. 
And his brother-in-law, the Emperor of Germanj"-, who visited 
Paris while the matter was under discussion, took the same view, 
and strongly urged him to remain neuter in a quarrel in which he 
could have no pretence to interfere. He made up his mind; told 
de Vergennes that he entirely disapproved of the proposed treaty ; 
then, as usual, allowed his deliberate judgment to be overruled, 
and, at the beginning of 1778, signed the very treaty which he 
condemned ; and sent a body of troops to New York, and the best 
appointed fleet that had ever borne the French flag to the West 
Lidies, to strip England of her settlements in those waters. As 
France never entered into any war more destitute alike of plea 
and of object, it was but a righteous retribution that she never 
engaged in one which brought her greater discredit or more 
disaster. The army, or division, for it does not deserve a more 
important name, which was sent to America, under General 
Rochambeau, did no service whatever to the colonists ; who, in fact, 
had no need of French aid, for, three months before the treaty was 
signed, the Convention of Saratoga had practically ensured their 
success and their independence. His fleet was defeated in a great 
battle ; and, in spite of the united eftbrts of himself, and Spain, the 
British flag remained immoveable on the rock of Gibraltar, which 
witnessed the discomfiture and destruction of the mightiest force 
hat had ever yet been assembled for the reductionof a single fortress. 
But these defeats and disgraces were far from being the most 
20 



434 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1778. 

pernicious of the fruits which France reaped from the war, into 
which she had rushed with such wanton levity. The expenses 
were enormous : and a vast addition was made to the national 
debt, which previously had overtaxed all the ability of the go- 
vernment to grapple with it. There had for years been a great 
annual deficit; and that was now raised to such a height that 
to stave off a national bankruptcy any longer seemed absolutely ' 
impossible. While yet more mischievous than the imminence 
of even such dishonour was the circumstance, that the troops 
which had been employed in America had caught the con- 
tagion of the republican spirit of the colonists, and had brought 
back with them a leaning to forms of government such as they 
had seen established in that country, which was calculated to 
prove a serious embarrassment to any statesman who might seek, 
as Turgot had sought, and as even Necker had made some weak 
show of attempting, to introduce constitutional reforms on the 
basis of maintaining the king's legitimate authority. In fact, before 
the main body of French troops had crossed the Atlantic, 
even before the treaty of alliance Was signed, one young noble, 
the Marquis de la Fayette, had joined Washington as a volunteer, 
and had devoted some of his wealth, for he was very rich, to 
raising troops for the service of the colonists. Though he was 
utterly devoid of any sort of abilitj'-, civil or military, the 
Americans were so pleased at having their part thus openly taken 
by a member of one of the proudest families in France, that 
Congress voted him their formal thanks for his exertions: the 
army which he joined on its arrival, and those French at home 
who sympathised with the Americans, a great majority of the 
nation, were proud that one of their countrymen should have 
rendered the cause that had triumphed services worthy of so public 
a recognition : and thus, having been thanked by the Congress 
because he was a Frenchman, and having become popular among 
his countrymen because he had been thanked by the Congress, 
he now returned home, inflated with measureless vanity and self- 
importance, and a sworn foe to all the ancient institutions of his 
country, because, according to his own estimate of his own actions, he 
had had no small share in establishing a republic in North America. 
Matters now went rapidly from bad to worse : in their despair 
the present and the past finance ministers began to wrangle with 
one another, on the question of who was principally accountable 
for the yearly increasing disproportion between the expenditure 
and the revenue. The nation was irritable, and distrustful of 
every one ; and was inclined to welcome any new suggestion : 
when one was suddenly put before it in the cry that one or two 
voices in the parliament raised for the convocation of the states- 



A.-D. 1787.] DEMAND FOE THE STATES-GENEEAL. 435 

general. It was not a cry founded on the recollection or truditions 
of any service rendered by former meetings of that body : for 
before it fell into disuse its iueiHcacy for any useful purpose 
had become proverbial ; and its meetings had been discontinued 
for nearly 180 years, with the universal acquiescence of all 
parties. But so desperate did the condition of the country 
truly seem to all who now took the trouble to acquaint themselves 
with the posture of aifairs, and so futile had all the expedients 
proved which had been designed to extricate it fi-om its difficulties, 
that the only chance of safety seemed to be in novelty : and the 
resuscitation of a body so long defunct had as great a character 
of novelty about it as could attach to any other proposal. The 
minister at the moment was Lomenie de Brienne, archbishop 
of Toulouse, the most profligate, and the most incompetent of all 
those v/ho had risen to power during the reign. Utterly unable to 
devise any scheme himself, and indiiferent to any consideration 
but that of prolonging his occupation of office, which he was using 
as a means of enriching himself and all his relations, he recom- 
mended Louis to consent to the demand; and the convocation of 
the states-general was promised. But the promise, which was in- 
tended to extricate the government from its perplexities, in fact 
only laid the foundation of a fresh series of troubles. There can 
be no greater proof of the universal contempt into which the 
old states-general had fallen, than is afforded by the fact that, 
when those, on whom it devolved to make arrangements for the 
convocation, and the proceedings of the new assembly, began to 
search for precedents, the most careful search could neither ascer- 
tain who were entitled to be elected, nor, what was perhaps of still 
more consequence, who had a right to vote as electors, nor, in fact, 
anything beyond the rudest outline of the ancient proceedings. 

Unluckily, shortly after the announcement of the king's inten- 
tion, Necker resumed his office, which, at such a financial crisis, 
as indeed it had often been before, was that of prime minister in all 
but name. And though it manifestly belonged to the king to 
settle all the details relating to the elections of the representatives, 
and to their proceedings when elected, Necker, moved partly his 
own childish vanity and desire for popularity, and partly by a 
certain unreasoning reliance which he always professed on the 
power of virtue and of reason,^ gave up all the king's prerogatives, 

' The Marquis de Bouille tells ns, les j'eux an ciel, qn'il fallait bien 

in his Miimoires, that he himself ex- compter sur les vertus morales des 

postulated warmly with Necker on hommes ' (jyidvi. p. 70) ; and Nee - 

the inevitable consequences of some ker's own daughter, Madame de 

of his measures, which, in the eyes Stael, confesses that he was ' se fiant 

of the Marquis, must tend to arm the trop, il faut I'avouer, h I'empire de 

populace against the higher classes : la raison.' — Consid. sur la Rev. J);, 

' II me re'pondit froidement, en levant i. 171. 



436 MODERN HISTOEY. [j.n. 1783. 

one after the cj;her, and finally arranged, or suffered the majority 
to arrange, the whole of the proceedings in such a way that the 
predominance of the representatives of the third estate, or the 
people, over those of the nobles and clergy, should be at all times 
assured ; and that, practically, the whole power of the state should 
be at once placed in their hands. He granted the demand, for 
which, in the whole history of the states-general, there was not a 
single precedent that the number of the representatives of the 
commons should equal that of the representatives of bpth the 
other orders together ; and with a second demand, that the whole 
body of members should sit in one chamber and vote, not by order, 
but by head, he dealt, if possible, worse than if he had conceded it, 
not deciding it by the king's authority, but leaving it to be deter- 
mined by the deputies themselves, at their first meeting, when it 
was certain that the commons would be able to overbear both 
clergy and nobles. Such an arrangement was, in fact, ensuring 
precipitation and violence at a crisis when the utmost deliberation 
and calmness were, above all things, requisite, since the states 
were to have a task entrusted to, or imposed upon them, such 
as that body had never pi'eviouslj' been called upon to perform. 
It was understood that the questions on which, as the representa- 
tives of the nation, they were to be consulted, were not to be 
limited to the solution of the financial difficulties of the kingdom, 
but were to embrace the framing of a new constitution. Hitherto^ 
as Turgot had truly pointed out, France could hardly be said 
to have any constitution at all. There had been no limitations of 
the absolute power of the king : there had been no security for the 
liberty of the subject : no machinery by which redress of griev- 
ances could be obtained, nor any precautions taken against the con- 
tinuance of the most cruel abuses. The feudal system still existed 
in the country, in many of its most intolerable features ; in its 
disdain of all the untitled classes, and in the preposterous privileges 
allowed to all who could claim nobility : the exemptions from 
different taxes to which they were entitled, and which of course 
necessitated the imposition of heavier burdens on those who could 
claim no such privileges, were bad enough ; but the power which 
every territorial noble had a prescriptive right to exercise over 
every resident on his domains was infinitely more unendurable. 
It was hardly an exaggeration to say, that the middle and lower 
classes had no rights at all, save such as the humanity or caprice of 
some great lord might chance to allow them. The peasants might 
not weed their plots of ground, lest they should disturb the young 
game, nor manure the land with anything which, it was fancied, 
might injure their flavour : other grievances pressed on their daily 
life, and means of subsistence still more heavily ; they were 



A.D, 1789.J CHARACTEK OF THE EEPRESENTATIVES. 437 

forced to giind tlieir corn at the lord's mill, to bake their bread 
in his oven, to press their grapes at his wine-press, paying for 
each act whatever dues he might think fit to impose : and often 
having their bread or their wine spoilt by the delays which such a 
system could not fail to create. Some of the rights of seigniory, 
(as they were called), can hardly be mentioned in the present 
more decorous age ; some were so ridiculous that it is inconceiva- 
ble how their very absurdity had not led to their extinction. In 
•the marshy districts of Brittany, when the lady was confined, 
the peasantry and small farmers were bound to spend tlieir whole 
time in the marshes, beating the waters to keep the frogs quiet, 
that the invalid might not be distui'bed by their croaking. It was 
plain that no reform would be worth anything which did not 
whoUy sweep away customs like these for which abuses was too 
mild a word. 

But the difiiculties which surrounded the minister did not arise 
in any degree from the apprehensions of opposition in any quarter 
to their abolition. The nobles themselves perceived the necessity 
of surrendering privileges which were not only unreasonable and 
odious, but which might become even dangerous to themselves if 
their abolition should be regarded as incompatible with the main- 
tenance of their order : and, before the close of the year 1788, both 
nobles and clergy presented an address to the king declaring their 
willingness to renounce every one of their exclusive privileges, and 
to bear their share of whatever public burdens the necessities of 
the state might require to be imposed, on a footing of complete 
equality with all their fellow-subjects. 

Such an address, dictated by a loyal patriotism, and breathing 
at least some portion of statesmanlike foresight, would have 
sufficed to remove many of the greatest difficulties from the minis- 
ter's path, if he had not been bent on making others for himself. 
And to a mere superficial observer, it might have appeared as if 
the higher classes had no special reason to fear the temper of the 
states-general, because of the representatives of the commons 
hardly one was drawn from the classes which had suffered most 
from the privileges to which allusion has been made ; and who, 
therefore, might be expected to retain an angry memory of them, 
even after they were surrendered. They were taken, with scarcely 
an exception, from the inhabitants of the different towns; from 
the provincial lawyers, doctors, and artists, with a few obscure, 
though busy, literary men, who, if conscious of no particular 
claim which prelates or dukes or counts had on their gratitude, 
were, in all likelihood, equally unable to allege any past injuries 
which they might be excused, at least to themselves, for desiring 
to avenge. But the evil lay deeper. The animosity excited by 



438 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1788. 

injuries inflicted by a single individual, or by many individuals, 
might bave been allayed or extinguished : feelings of contempt 
for and animosity to a whole class could not be so easily eradicated. 
One act of -disinterested abnegation and liberality on the part of 
the existing generation of nobles could not efface the impression 
made by almost three centuries of selfishness, insolence, cruelty, 
and profligacy. That long period had witnessed one unceasing 
crusade against all that, in any country or in any age, had been 
regarded as holy, or virtuous, or even respectable. The kings had 
set an uniform example of the grossest vices : the nobles of both 
sexes had, with equal shamelessness, vied with each other in the 
accuracy with which they imitated their royal masters. Nor had 
the lives of the higher clergy reproved the licentiousness of the 
laymen. Even of those who had kept their own lives pure, few 
indeed had thought it their duty to reprove vice when practised 
by the princes of the land : while, at the existing moment, the 
men most conspicuous in the whole kingdom for immorality and 
avowed infidelity sat in the highest places of the Church. It was 
not strange that such uninterrupted iniquity should have spread 
one general demoralisation over the whole nation; nor that, 
among the middle and lower classes, it should have taken the 
form of bitter hatred towards those of higher rank, whom, as a 
body, they could not but despise. How great that demoralisation 
was, in what appalling ferocity that hatred was about to show 
itself, by what savage ferocity and loathsome impiety it was 
to proclaim its scom of a Church which could complacently 
reckon men like Lomenie and Talleyrand among its highest dig- 
nitaries, none could anticipate. 

Yet it was not among the middle or lower classes that the most 
forward and dangerous of the assailants of the old institutions 
were at first found. There was one person especially who seemed 
to add to his political opposition to the minister a personal hatred 
of the king and queen, and he was a member of the royal family 
itself; the prince nearest the throne, with the exception of 
Louis's sons and brothers, the Duke of Orleans. Every prince of 
that house but one had earned an infamous notoriety by his vices ; 
and the existing duke, while equalling the worst in licentiousness 
and the open avowal of infidelity, added to his private iniquities 
off"ences against the public, disloyalty and treason, from which 
they had been free.^ He was especially bitter against the queen, 

1 Gaston, duke of Orleans, in the with him, and was revived by 

time of Ridielieu and Mazarin, had Louis XIV. for his own brother, the 

been guilty of repeated treason ; but husband (and probably the mur- 

the latter Dukes of Orleans were not derer) of the Princess Mary of Eng- 

his descendants. The title perished land. 



A.D. 1788.] THE DUKE OF OELEANS. 439 

whom, as was commonly believed, he had dared to approach with 
the language of love, by whom he had been repulsed with just 
disdain, and on whom he thirsted for revenge. He had also con- 
ceived the idea of supplanting the king himself, either by his 
dethronement or abdication, and of placing the crown on his own 
head: and with this object he had been industrious in fomenting 
the growing discontent in different parts of the country. In Paris, 
and even in the parliament, so unwisely restored, he had agents in 
his pay; and many of the most factious and disloyal acts on 
which the parliament had lately ventured were so clearly traced 
to his influence, that at one time Louis had banished him from 
Paris, though he was prevailed on, after a few months, to cancel 
the sentence, and even to receive him at Versailles. He was 
enormously rich : and, as the time fixed for the meeting of the 
states-general drew near, exerted himself more vigorously than 
ever to secure instruments of different sorts for the accomplish- 
ment of his ends. He patronised clubs where measures incom- 
patible with the security of the government were openly 
advocated, and where a system was organised for controlling the 
election of representatives. He hired pamphleteers to deluge the 
capital with libels upon everybody and every measure which 
misrepresentation could be expected to render odious : and he kept 
in his pay gangs of desperadoes, who, in one widespread and fatal 
riot, in the very week that preceded the meeting of the states, 
gave fearful proof of their readiness to perpetrate any crime which 
might be commanded by their paymaster. One of the clubs which 
were formed under his auspices bore the significant name of T^es 
Enrages. But another, with which, after a time, it coalesced, 
became the most powerful of all the agents in the Kevolution, 
and the direct promoter of its most sanguinary atrocities. At first 
it was called the Breton club, from its founders, who were some of 
the deputies from Brittany ; but when the assembly removed to 
Paris, and it obtained for its meetings an adjacent convent, for- 
merly belonging to the Dominican or Jacobin friars, it took the 
name of Jacobin; while the lead in it passed from its original 
founders into the hands of Robespierre, a deputy from Arras, of 
that very class from whose predominance in the states-general 
the sagacity of Burke, from the first, foreboded so much mischief; ' 
attorneys without practice or character, habitually eager to make 
a base profit by fomenting disturbance. But even Burke could 
not have foreseen the insane thirst for bloodshed which became 
the morbid characteristic of him and so many of his legal brethren ; 
for it is remarkable that not only he, but Danton, Vergniaud, 

» Burke's Worfis, v. 93, ed. 1803. 



440 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1788. 

Petiou, and Fouche were all members of the same profession ; and 
the history of no country since the creation of the world is 
written in characters of such indelible infamy as the annals 
of France while these men had the chief influence over her 
councils. 

One thing d'Orleans wanted : an orator to aid his designs in the 
assembly itself; and what he, perhaps, could not have obtained 
for himself, the imprudence and mismanagement of Necker 
drove into his arms ; and the man who now became his spokes- 
man was for the next two years so far the most conspicuous 
person in the kingdom, that we must say a few words about his 
previous career and character. The Count de Mirabeau was born, 
in 1749, as the eldest son of a Provencal noble of Italian origin, 
great wealth, and a ferocious eccentricity of character which made 
him the worst possible instructor for a youth of brilliant talents, 
unbridled passions, and a vehemence of disposition which would 
have severely tested the most judicious patience to restrain or 
regulate. His early years were passed in a career of unsurpassed 
licentiousness, which, from time to tihie, was visited by his father 
with a severity of punishment which, for one of his rank of life, 
was equally unprecedented. Though unusually ugly (he himself 
compared his face to that of a tiger who had had the small-pox), 
he was irresistible with women. At first he was placed in the 
army, which he had not joined six months before he seduced his 
colonel's mistresa, fought more than one duel with his brother 
officers, and was finally committed to prison at the request of his 
own father. Being presently released, he served a campaign 
in Corsica ; and, having involved himself in debt in that island, 
he outrivalled all other suitors for the hand of a wealthy heiress 
in the Limousin. He treated her with the grossest neglect and 
cruelty, dishonoured several respectable families by his licentious 
gallantries, fought more duels, and, at his father's desire, was 
again thrown into prison ; being committed first to the Chateau 
d'lf ; and afterwards, when it was discovered that he had prevailed 
on the wife of one of the officers of the castle to aid and share in 
his escape, to the castle of Roux, on the frontier of Switzerland. 
Here he won the goodwill of the governor of the fortress, the 
Count de St.-Mauris, and repaid it by miming away with a lady 
whom he met at his table, the Marchioness de Monnier. Once more 
he was arrested and imprisoned at Dijon ; but he escaped into Hol- 
land, and there supported himself and Madame de Monnier by his 
pen. The p.air were prosecuted by the marquis, and, after a time, 
were kidnapped by agents employed by him and by Mirabeau's 
father, and were both committed to separate prisons ; Mirabeau 
himself being confined at Vincennes. Madame de Monnier com- 



A.D. 1788.] IVnEABEAU. 441 

niitted suicide in her prison ; but, at the end of three years, JNIirabeau 
was released from his : and, having prevailed on a young lady of 
exquisite beauty to leave her convent for his sake, he quitted the 
kingdom with her, flying first to Prussia, where Frederic the 
Great, equally glad to receive him as a Frenchman, a profligate, 
and a genius, took him for a time into high favour. Like everyone 
else who came in contact with him, the count was greatly struck 
with the king's character; but it is remarkable that the eflect 
which it seems to have produced upon him was a decided pre- 
ference of peace to war. 

While at the court of Berlin, he began to apply himself to poli- 
tical studies, and drew up a paper on the situation of Europe, and 
of France in particular, in which he suggested the conclusion of a 
commercial treaty with England, as 'a sublime revolution which 
would ensure the peace of the world,' and which he forwarded to 
Calonne, who was then in ofiice, not being aware that that 
minister had recently listened to a proposal of such a measure 
from Mr. Pitt, and was at that veiy time engaged in negotiations 
on the subject. Frederic had probably supported him to some 
extent at Berlin ; but as, after his death, that source of supply was 
lost to Mirabeau, he quitted Prussia, and for a year or two roamed 
about in a condition but little removed from penury, visiting 
Switzerland, Holland, and England, and being driven from each 
country by his creditors ; till, at the beginning of 1789, hearing 
of the approaching meeting of the states-general, he resolved to 
return to Provence, to offer himself as a candidate for a seat in 
that assembly. "Worthless as he was, no heavier misfortune could 
have befallen the count than that he should have been dis- 
appointed in his hopes, as he was disappointed. He wished to be 
returned by the nobles of the province as their representative, in 
which case undoubtedly he would have stood forward as their 
champion ; but they wore unwilling to favour the ambition of one 
who had earned so disreputable a notoriety : and having, in defi- 
ance of the royal edict, which had declared everyone eligible, esta- 
blished a rule. of their own, by which the possession of a fief was 
rendered an indispensable qualification, they preferred another 
candidate. Full of indignation, and burning to revenge himself 
on those who had rejected him, Mirabeau turned to the third 
estate of the province, and sought the suff'rages of the electors of 
that class ; avowing himself now an opponent of the ministry, and 
an uncompromising enemy of the privileges of the nobles, and, in 
announcing his candidature, he, for the first time, gave proof how 
greatly he was qualified by nature for the part which he was pre- 
paring to play. 

nis speeches during his canvass gave the first token of that 




142 MODEKN HISTORY. [a.d. 1789. 

commanding and fiery eloquence -whicli a few months afterwards 
caused the destinies of the whole country and of every class to 
depend upon his voice. On the people of the provinces, who had 
never before been addressed in the language of independence, it 
had an electric effect; and, wherever the fame of his oratory 
reached, his popularity became irresistible. His reception at Aix 
resembled that of a sovereign returning from victory. The com- 
mons, whose suffrages he was seeking, poured forth from the 
gates to escort him into the town, while a train of horsemen and 
carriages a mile long proved that the enthusiasm was not con- 
fined to the lowest classes. The road was strewed with flowers, 
and it was amid the roar of 100 guns, and the acclamation of the 
whole populace, which drowned even the thunder of the guns, 
that the rejected of the nobles entered the capital of Provence. 
So great did he feel his influence to be over the whole district, 
that a few days afterwards he ventured even to risk his popularity 
by aiding in the suppression of a riot at Marseilles, which the gar- 
rison had proved unable to quell. He was returned unanimously, 
by the citizens of both Aix and Marseilles, as the representative of 
the commons ; and he hastened to Paris to take his seat in the 
assembly, in his heart almost as sore at his success with them, as 
he had been indignant at his repudiation by the nobles. For, 
even while vowing to revenge himself on them, he was proud of 
belonging to their order, and was as deeply imbued with their 
prejudices as with their vices ; while, with those who had chosen 
him to represent their views, he had not a single feeling in 
common. 

Even after he had formally enrolled himself among the demo- 
cratic party, he made one more effort to escape from it. The mea- 
sures adopted in the assembly in its first sittings alarmed him ; as 
they could not fail to alarm every man of penetration. More than 
once he put himself forward in opposition to the proposals of 
some of the more violent leaders ; and when he had thus shown 
the use to which he was inclined to put his ability and his in- 
fluence, he made overtures to Necker, ofl'ering to support the 
government, if the ministers on their part would place confidence 
in him. If no other act of Necker's showed his unfitness for his 
ofiice, it would be sufficiently proved by his treatment of this pro- 
posal. For the discussions that had taken place, few as they 
were, had been already amply sufficient to show that there was 
not one man whose adhesion it was so important to gain. But of 
men and their feelings Necker knew nothing : all his notions of 
them he had derived from books. He was a theorist, and nothing 
but a theorist. Plis head, or all of it that was not occupied with 
the multiplication-table, was filled with abstract principles of 



A.D. 1789.] NECKER REQUESTS MIRABEAU'S AID. 443 

government, without its ever occurring to him that they might 
not be equally fit at all times for all people ; and without his 
having even informed himself correctlj'- of their effect in any case 
in which they had been tried. To Mirabeau's offers of co-opera- 
tion he replied coldly, that the diflference between his and the 
count's general views must prevent them acting in unison : Mira- 
beau, he said, wished to govern by policy, he himself by morality : 
and, with this aphorism, he rejected the alliance of the most 
powerful speaker and ablest man in the assembly, though he could 
have no doubt that the effect of his rejection must be to throw 
him into the arms of the enemies of the court and the ministry. 
Jealousy of the capacity which Mirabeau had already exhibited, 
and of his popularity, which Necker always desired to engross to 
himself, had probably as great a share in influencing his decision 
as the views of morality which he alleged as his reason ; but no 
more fatal mistake was ever made. The Provencal nobles can 
hardly be blamed for declining to choose as their representative the 
most notorious profligate in the whole kingdom ; nor, when they 
did so, was his ability known : now that it was known, Necker 
had it in his power to neutralise the consequences of their resolu- 
tion ; and it may well be that on his decision depended the whole 
course of subsequent events. The whole future of France, and, 
for many years, of continental Europe, would, it is highly pro- 
bable have been widely different from what it was, had it been 
for Mirabeau's interest, either as a representative of the nobles, or 
as a recognised supporter and champion of the government, to repel 
the encroachments of the representatives of the commons, instead 
of prompting and urging them on with his unrivalled energy and 
eloquence as their mouthpiece and leader. 

He was bitterly disappointed. He had undoubtedly not been 
wholly disinterested in the offer of his services to Necker. As his 
profligacy had made him needy, he wanted money ; as it had 
lowered both his character and his influence, he was still more 
desirous to attain a situation where he could display the capa- 
city, both for speaking and acting, of which he was conscious, to 
its full extent, as the acknowledged bulwark of a great party. 
The king's was the party which he would have chosen, but he 
could not afford to be independent ; and, on being rebuffed by 
Necker's imprudent and pedantic vanity, he had no resource left 
but that of connecting himself with the Duke of Orleans, by whom 
he was received with open arms ; and, for the next four months, 
till he learnt how cowardly and despicable the duke was, and, as 
Buch, how incapable of profiting even by the boldness of his 
partisans, he was the chief adviser of his secret councils, the open 
instrument of bis desig-ns in the assembly. Every step in the 



444 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1789. 

Listory of those four months is marked with blood and crime. 
The object of d'Orleans, as we have mentioned, was to dethrone 
his kinsman, and to reign in his stead; and this project was not 
altogether inconsistent with Mirabeau's own opinions, who had 
studied the history of England and of her constitution, and, as a 
statesmen, honestly desired to see the establishment of a similar 
form of government in his own country. Had not Necker repulsed 
him, he would have been content to see the existing dynasty inau- 
gurate it ; but he was not insensible to the advantage to the nation 
of its sovereign's authority resting on a parliamentary title, and he 
now began cordially and zealously to labour for the elevation of 
the prince whose connection with the reigning Bourbons bore 
some analogy to William's relationship to the Stuarts. "When he 
had taken his part, his fiery temper was neither daunted nor 
shocked at the crimes into which the populace allowed itself to be 
hurried ; though many of them, in their details, showed an innate 
ferocity of temper such as had never been witnessed before in the 
history of civilised nations. 

Had the object of the opponents of the government been the 
redress of abuses, that was partly secured by the measures an- 
nounced, by the king himself, in a royal sitting before the end of 
June, irie abolished all the most burdensome and odious imposts. 
He extinguished the peculiar privileges of the nobles, their ex- 
emption from taxation, and all those seignorial rights which were 
a degradation of the vassals. He opened all military and civil 
appointments to the nation at large. He ordained that for the 
future the states-general should be constantly reassembled at 
lixed intervals : and that the whole revenue, both in the sources 
from which it should be raised and in its expenditure, should be 
regulated by them. He renounced the practice and power of 
arbitrary imprisonment ; and finall}'^, he granted the liberty of the 
press. So complete was the reform that, twenty-five years later, 
when the miseries and struggles and convulsions of a quarter of a 
century had ended in the restoration of the old family to the 
throne, the Charter with which Louis XVIH. inaugurated his 
reign, framed on consultation with the ablest of the survivors^ of 
the Revolution, was identical in all its leading principles with the 
constitution now promulgated by his brother.^ But no concessions 
could satisfy the . demagogues whose one object was to quarrel 
with him who made them. That, in themselves, they were suf- 
ficient Mirabeau himself could not deny ; and his sole resource 

' M. de Talleyrand. of the two kings : adding, ' On fre'mit 

2 Lacretelle {Histoire de la France en pensant au long et e'pouvantable 

pendant le ISmeSiecle, vii. 36) admits circuit que nous avons en a faire pour 

the close resemblance of the measures revenir presqu'au point du depart.' 



A.U. 1780.] THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 445 

■was to neutralise their effect by a complaint that they proceeded 
from the king's liberality, not from the people's will. ' Louis,' he 
affirmed, ' was still a despot, and the presents of despots were 
dangerous.' And he complained of his coming down to the 
assembly with an escort of guards ; as if that ordinary portion of 
every state ceremony had been intended to overawe their delibera- 
tions. Nor could M. Bailly, the president of the assembly and 
mayor of Paris, who, in both capacities, took every opportunity of 
offering personal insults to the king, deny the ample sufficiency 
of the securities now promised for future liberty. ' Nothing,' he 
admitted, 'was wanting, but that the people should itself have 
taken them, and that the king should not have given them.'^ And 
they had already proclaimed this feeling to the world by an act of 
strange and lawless assumption ; taking upon themselves to change 
the ancient legal title of ' the States General ' into the novel and 
unheard-of name of ' the National Assembly,' and persisting in the 
use of this new appellation, in spite of the formal prohibition of 
the king, who rightly felt bound to condemn an act which had no 
motive but a defiance of his own authority. But those who felt 
this felt also the danger that the. liberal policy thus announced 
might procure the government supporters among those in whose 
eyes order and tranquillity were the first of political blessings. 
And they saw, therefore, the necessity of rousing the populace to 
acts of outrage to intimidate the citizens in general ; while, at the 
same time, a gang of the very dregs of the people, in the pay 
of the Duke of Orleans, was, day after day, introduced into the 
assembly to terrify any champion of reason or of humanity who 
might dare to lift up his voice there. This is not a history of the 
Revolution : and I do not purpose here to dwell on any of its scenes, 
except on such as show the character of Louis himself; the insults 
and perils to which Louis was personally exposed, and the patient 
magnanimous courage with which he endured or confronted them ; 
and which only lacked a corresponding energy to quell and chas- 
tise the guilty to entitle him to the chai-acter of a hero. Un- 
luckily his irresolution, when called upon to act, was fully equal 
to his fortitude when only required to suffer. He could never be 
brought to see that to resist lawlessness and to punish crime is 
itself the very first of a sovereign's duties, and that the greater the 
danger with which the performance is accompanied, the plainer is 
the duty. Riot and outrage therefore went on unchecked. One day 
the Orleanists excited a mutiny among the troops who formed the 

* According: to De Tocqueville, nerent plus ^desirer que leurs affaires 

this feeliug was of older date, and I'usscnt mieux faites : ils comnien- 

existed even before the death of 9aient a voiiloirlesfaire eiix-memes.' 

Voltaire. ' Les Fran^aia ne se bor- — L'Ancien Regime, p. 245. 



i'iQ MODERN HISTOllY. [a.d. 1789. 

garrison of the city ; another day they roused a ferocious mob to 
attack the Bastille, the great prison fortress of the capital, de- 
servedly odious to all in its first character, and unluckily in its 
second too extensive to be held by the handful of troops which 
had never been intended as a defence for a stronghold that no 
one had ever supposed liable to attack. A guard of less than 120 
men, of vrhom two-thirds were superannuated veterans, was 
scarcely sufficient to watch its vast extent of towers, ramparts, 
inner and outer courts; and utterly inadequate to maintain a 
single outpost against assault. The fortress was stormed, and the 
victorious populace gave a sad omen of the savage barbarity which 
was to distinguish all their successes by massacreing the garrison, 
and even mutilating the dead bodies, and bearing their heads and 
dissevered limbs in ghastly triumph through the streets. 

The author of these horrors hoped, probably, to terrify the king 
and queen into fleeing from Versailles, in which case they would 
at once have placed d'Orleans on the throne; and Marie An- 
toinette, fearing not for herself but for her husband, did at once 
urge his withdrawal to the head-quarters of the army in Picardy, 
while his younger brother, the Count d'Artois, showed his ap- 
proval of the plan by at once quitting the country ; thus setting the 
example of that emigration of the royalist nobles which was con- 
tinued throughout the summer and autumn, and to which no 
small portion of the calamities and disgraces which ensued is 
manifestly to be attributed. But Louis, who was as little accessi- 
ble to personal fear as the queen, decided on a manlier course. He 
refused to take a step which would have the effect of leaving the 
field open to his enemies ; and determined rather to act upon a 
suggestion that had been made to him by a party of the Parisians, 
which, however, was not composed of his friends, to visit the city, 
and to endeavour, by his presence, to shame the citizens back to 
decency, if not to loyalty. It was a bold determination, not 
adopted without a full consciousness of the danger to which it 
exposed him, for he had been warned of the existence of a plot to 
assassinate him. Before he set out he burnt all his papers, signed 
a deed by which, in the event of his detention by the citizens as 
a prisoner, or of his murder, he appointed his next brother, the 
Count de Provence, regent of the kingdom during his son's 
minority; and took leave of the queen as of one whom he might 
never see again. But he was deceived. Bailly, indeed, again took 
the opportunity to offer him more than one wanton insult, little 
foreseeing that in outraging the most humane of kings he was 
but building up a scaifold on which his own head should hereafter 
fall ; but }ie overshot his mark, and when he forced on the king 
the tricoloured cockade, which the assembly had recently adopted, 



A.D. 1789.] DISTUEBANCES IN THE PEOVINCES. 447 

as the national colour, in place of the time-honoured lilies of the 
ancient kings, and when Louis, in compliance with the rule which 
he had prescribed to himself, of complying with everything and 
enduring everything, accepted the revolutionary emblem and fixed 
it in his hat, the impulsive populace seemed inspired with a sudden 
fit of returning loyalty, and, though they had been strictly for- 
bidden to utter their old loyal cry of * Vive le Roi !' it now burst 
forth from a thousand throats, and the king's return to the barrier, 
on his way back to Versailles, was a complete procession of 
triumph. 

D'Orleans and Mirabeau had missed their blow. They began 
to plan another ; and to organise an attack on the palace at Ver- 
sailles, fi-om which it should be impossible for the sovereigns to 
escape. Meanwhile, they spread over the whole country stories 
whose manifest absurdity did not prevent their obtaining a ready 
belief: that the courl had attacked the people, that the queen her- 
self had formed a plot to blow up the National Assembly by a 
mine, and wben that was destroyed, to march the army instantly 
on Paris, and massacre the citizens ; ^ that she had been convicted 
of a design to poison the king himself, and to blow up the Palais 
Royale, the residence of the Duke of Orleans. And by thus in- 
flaming the minds of the people, they had excited formidable and 
bloody riots in many of the provinces. In Normandy, Alsace, and 
Provence the poorer citizens rose against the wealthy townsmen, 
the peasants against their landlords, burning houses, and mas- 
sacreing the inhabitants with circumstances of unheard-of bar- 
barity. Some were torn in pieces, some were roasted alive, some 
actually had portions of their flesh torn ofl" and eaten by their 
murderers before the blow was given which terminated their 
agonies ; their sex did not save ladies from being at times the 
victims of similar atrocities, nor did it prevent women from being 
the act.ors in them. These months of summer recorded such 
scenes of horror, terrible in themselves, still more terrible as indi- 
cations of the fiendish temper which prevailed among the people 
in general, as might well have made any man of statesmanship, 
of honesty, or of common humanity weigh carefully his every 
action and every word lest the effect should be further to excite 
the passions or to strengthen the hands of the classes who had 
shown how fearfully they were inclined to misuse 'the briefest 
moment of power. 

But considerations like these had no weight with the leadiuo- 

1 Arthur Young heard both these therefore admitting of no doubt. See 

stories. One was affirmed, at the his Travels during 1787, 1788, 1789, 

table d'hote at Colmar, as a fact cer- date Jrfly 24 and July 31, 1789. 
tified by one of the deputies, and 



448 MODERN HISTOEY. [A.n. 1789. 

spirits of the assembly ; still less with d'Orleans and his parasites, 
who sought nothing but the elevation of their chief, feeling 
assured that his utter want of any kind of ability would in eifect 
place the power of the state in their hands : and they were strangely 
helped by the very classes wlio were the chief objects of their 
hostility; but who, in the strange delirium of the times, were 
as unreasoning and impetuous, though in a veiy different way, as 
the lowest of the populace. As a meeting of the assembly only 
three weeks after the destruction of the Bastille, a singular fit of 
timidity and liberality combined seized the whole body of deputies. 
A noble proposed the instant abolition of all the privileges of the 
nobility : a bishop moved for the extinction of tithes. Deputies 
from the different provinces rose one after another, renouncing the 
peculiar privileges of each. There were rights and immunities 
which Brittany, Burgundy, Provence, Dauphiny, with all the 
pride of an honest if narrow-minded patriotism, had maintained 
ever since their annexation to the crown, as the token and recog- 
nition of their ancient independence, alike against the imperious 
despotism of Richelieu, the ceremonial liberalism of Colbert, and 
the gentle seductions of Fleury ; these were all abandoned by the 
possessors in a single night, without a word of discussion. Such 
a fever of destruction had seized the whole body that they would 
not listen to one of their members who sought to draw a distinc- 
tion between different kinds of rights. The mere existence of any 
peculiar privilege or custom was held to be a sufficient reason for 
its abolition in the strange race of equality upon which the new 
legislators had entered. 

Such a sweeping annihilation of old institutions could not fail to 
stimulate the appetite of the revolutionary party for further en- 
croachments, while it had, in at least an equal degree, weakened 
the power of the government to resist them. None saw the 
advantage that had been gained more clearly than Mirabeau, who 
now began studiously to curtail the respectful or complimentary 
expressions previously used in the assembly when the royal 
person or authority was mentioned ; and presently to denounce 
the possession of property of any kind by any class or indi- 
vidual as an act of robbery. And he proceeded energetically in 
the organisation of an attack on Versailles, which his party had 
begun to plan, and which, he doubted not, would lead to the 
accomplishment of their main design, the enthronement of 
d'Orleans. Whether he desired that the scene which he was pre- 
paring, and which he had already designated to a friend as ' a 
terrible event,' should also lead to the murder of the king and 
queen may be doubtful. To the probability of such a crowning 
crime, he could not have been blind. But whether he would have 



A.I). 1789.] MADAME EOLAND. 44.9 

preferred such a consummation or not, there were already some for 
whom the idea had no horrors ; and, to the lasting disgrace of the 
sex, the first avowal of such a feeling came from a woman. In 
many of the fiercest scenes of the next four years women showed 
themselves as sanguinary and pitiless as the worst of men. And, 
as early as July of the year we are speaking, a Madame Eoland, 
the wife of an inspector of factories at Rouen, with premature 
ferocity, began to demand that the king and queen should be 
brought to trial ; or that some ' generous ' assassin ^ ' should risk 
his life to take theirs.' The spurious sentimentality which, 
because the Girondins were skilful to veil their wickedness beneath 
the mask of a philosophical philanthropy, has laboured to extol as 
pure in motive a party between whom and the Jacobins no diiFer- 
ence whatever existed, except that the Girondins were devoid of 
the hardiliood and energy of action which was the distinguishing 
feature of the fiercer ruffians, has selected Madame Roland as the 
especial object of its panegyric. But, in reality, no actor in the 
Revolution, of either sex, had a mind more thoroughly impreg- 
nated with the impiety, the indecency, and the ferocity of the 
age ; nor was there one neck on which the axe of the guillotine 
more deservedly fell than that of the coarse-minded and merciless 
woman who, before the shedding of innocent blood had become 
the special and characteristic crime of the nation, dared to urge 
the murder of the most blameless king that France had seen since 
St.-Louis, and of the worthy daughter of the noblest ornament of 
her sex that ever swayed a sceptre. 

' Decius she called him, in the Her letter (to M. Bose) is dated 

strange pedantry with which it was July 26, 1789, and is quoted by 

the fashion of the demagogues of the Croker, in his JEssai/s on the French 

day to pretend to find their models Revolution, p. 175. 
among the heroes of Jioman history. 



^^;=^ 



450 MODERN HISTORY. La.d. 1789. 



CHAPTER XX. 
A. D. 1789. 

MIRABEAU had taken so little care to conceal his machina- 
tions, if indeed he did not prefer to make them public in the 
hope that the royal family would flee from the menaced attack, and 
so leave the field open to him and the wealthy patron to whose 
cause he had hound himself, that, for weeks hefore, the day on 
which the intended attack on Versailles was to he made was 
known in Paris, and in the assembly. The assembly itself was 
in greater alarm than the court. The members saw that one object 
of the intended outbreak was to enslave them to the demagogues 
and mob of the capital ; and a strong party of the ablest and 
honestest deputies, even of those who were most zealous for a con- 
stitutional reform, addressed themselves to Necker with an earnest 
recommendation that the king should baffle the intended insur- 
rection, by removing the court and the assembly to Tours. Necker 
and the rest of the ministers approved of the suggestion ; but 
Louis at once rejected it. He feared that a step so manifestly 
designed to thwart and defeat the objects of his enemies might 
lead to civil war. As if he could have had a fairer issue on which 
to appeal to the nation than his right to exercise his most un- 
questioned prerogative of fixing the place for the assembly's 
meetings. He feared lest his edict might not command universal 
obedience, and lest those deputies who should refuse to follow him 
to Tours might regard his journey to one of the chief cities of the 
kingdom, as the British parliament had regarded the flight of 
James 11. to France, and pronounce it an actual abdication of the 
throne: and, never so resolute as when his resolutions were 
utterly indefensible, he positively rejected the suggestion, and 
remained at Versailles ; without, however, taking any further pre- 
cautions against the intended insurrection than that of sending, at 
the request of the magistrates of the town, for a single regiment 
from the frontier ; and that was taken so little care of, that the 
agents of d'Orleans were able to tamper with the soldiers, and to 
seduce them from their allegiance, so that on the day of trial the 
court was rather injured then served by their presence. 



A.D. 1789.] ATTACK ON THE HOTEL DE VILLE. 451 

On the fifth of October, the day -which had been so long 
appointed and announced, the attack took place. On a former 
occasion Mirabeau had declared that the best chance for the suc- 
cess of an insurrection lay in placing women at its head ; and, in 
compliance with this idea, the managers of the tumult arranged 
their plans. At daybreak a woman of notorious infamy of character 
marched down the street to the principal market in Paris, beating 
a drum, and calling on all who heard to follow her. She was soon 
joined by a troop of followers of her own class, who had been 
forewarned of her movements ; by a gang of market-women, and 
fishwomen, in every city a masculine and fierce body; and by 
a number of men too, disguised outwardly in female apparel, but 
by their deep voices, and the vigour with which they wielded 
their weapons, revealing their sex in spite of their attire. One 
man, Maillard, a ruffian who had been the most ferocious among 
the stormers of the Bastille, disdained any disguise, and under his 
guidance they proceeded to storm the Hotel de "Ville. A detach- 
ment of the national guard had been entrusted with the protection 
of that building ; but the national guard was under the command 
of Lafayette, who, with the strange imbecility or treachery which 
he showed throughout the whole affair, had left them wholly 
without orders. They fell back before the rioters, affirming it to 
be unworthy of soldiers to use their arms against women, and 
leaving the hotel to be pillaged without resistance ; and the mob, 
thus enabled to provide themselves with muskets, and other 
weapons, began with terrible shouts to announce their resolution 
to march upon Versailles ; the soldiers even fraternised with them, 
to use a word which now began to be applied to such unions, and 
not only agreed to join them in their advance upon the palace, 
but undertook to induce their own commander, Lafayette, to 
sanction their conduct by marching with them. When the day 
of insurrection had been so openly announced, no officer who had 
any regard for his own character would have been absent from his 
troops. But Lafayette was never seen till ten o'clock, long after 
the Hotel de Villehad been pillaged; and when, at last, he joined 
his men, though their language was as treasonable as that of the 
most ferocious of the rioters, though they announced their resolu- 
tion to attack the guards at Versailles, to drag the king to Paris, 
and to compel him to abdicate, his vanity was so flattered by their 
request that he would lead them, and his fear of endangering his 
popularity with them by a refusal was so great, that he consented 
to march at their head ; professing, indeed, to hope that he might 
thus be able to check their excesses, but in reality so entirely 
wasting the whole day in irresolution and speech making, that he 
did not leave Paris till four hours after Maillard and his followers 



152 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1789. 

had been in possession of Versailles. Great crimes, and Lafayette's 
desertion of his plain duty, to crush the insurrection in the hud, 
was a great crime, have seldom been prompted by more contemp- 
tible motiTes. 

Q^'he news of the approach of the rioters had preceded them : 
but the brief time that the court thus obtained for deliberations 
only served to show the weakness of Louis himself in the most 
painful light. The messenger who brought the intelligence, had 
reported that the great majority of the rioters were drunk, and that 
they were beguiling the way with the most sanguinary threats : 
and that they had been joined by a small gang of men, who had 
given themselves the name of Coupetetes, and who boasted that 
they should now have abundant opportunity of earning it. Louis 
would neither fly nor resist. The chief officers of his household 
would have persuaded him to retire to Rambouillet, and to leave 
the troops to deal with the insurgents. He could not make up his 
mind. He continued repeating that it was time to think seriously ; 
and it was of no avail that the queen replied that it was rather 
the time to act promptly. He would gladly have had her 
depart with the children, but she declared that her place was by 
his side ; that, as the daughter of Maria Teresa, she did not fear 
death, and she positively refused to leave him. But, having thus 
decided to remain, he forbade his body-guards to use their arms 
in his defence. He own life, that of all his family, and the whole 
royal authority was at stake, yet he could not be brought to see 
that it was his duty to strike a blow to save them. When the 
rioters did arrive, he even consented to receive a deputation from 
them ; on whom his dignified affability made a momentary im- 
pression ; for even at that fearful moment there was no hurry or 
disorder in his words or actions : it was apathy and insensibi- 
lity, not fear, that he displayed. 

The assembly was not so calm ; but many of the members were 
wiser and more resolute. Mounier, the president for the month, 
having persuaded Louis to propitiate the more violent members 
by giving the royal assent to the Declaration of the Rights of 
Man, as they had named a ridiculous assertion of abstract prin- 
ciples which had been recently embodied in a resolution, proposed 
that the whole body should repair to the palace to defend the 
king, or, at least, to unite their forces to his ; and when Mirabeau, 
who, at a former meeting, had hinted ferocious threats against the 
queen herself, in- a fiery speech resisted and obtained the rejection 
of that proposal, Mounier himself, with the bulk of those who 
agreed with him, nobly crossed over to the palace to share their 
sovereign's danger. As night advanced, the chief movers of the 
conspiracy showed themselves without disguise. Mirabeau was 



A.D. 1789.] LAFAYETTE HEACHES VERSAILLES. 453 

especially active, whispering to the soldiers, and stimulating the 
national guard to make common cause with the rioters; while 
d'Orleans and his servants were busy plying the mob with drink, 
and scattering money among them with wild profusion. Such 
allurements were but too effectual. Presently, a handful of the 
rioters, more drunk than their fellows, attacked the body-guard ; 
•when those faithful soldiers drove them back, the national guard, 
uniting with the mob, fired upon them, killing one of their officers; 
and, encouraged by the acquisition of such valuable allies, the 
rioters grew fiercer every moment, pelting the body-guard with 
stones, and even venturing at times to come to a hand-to-hand 
conflict with them, and to try to wrest their muskets from their 
hands. But even the knowledge of the danger to which hia 
faithful servants were exposed could not induce Louis to lay aside 
his untimely scruples. He sent down orders to the officers that 
the soldiers were to forbear to use their weapons, and to avoid 
bloodshed ; and he reiterated them, though the officers warned 
him their obedience could only expose them to assassination. 
The violence of the mob redoubled when they saw how slightly 
they were resisted. They fired on the body-guard ; they made 
vigorous attacks on the outer gates of the palace, which, luckily, 
were too strong for them. At last, when it was midnight, Lafayette 
arrived. On his way he had halted his men to make a long 
speecli, and to induce them to swear fidelity to the nation, the 
law, and the king : an oath needless if they were inclined to keep 
it, useless if they were not. On his arrival at the palace, he ob- 
tained an audience of the king ; undertook to be responsible for the 
tranquillity of the night ; and then, after sending off a bombastic 
note to the magistrates of Paris to assure them that he had re- 
established order, he retired to a friend's house a mile off, and 
went to bed, knowing that the rioters were still surrounding the 
palace, and bent on effecting their entrance. 

The night was wet, but they sought no shelter except such as 
was afforded occasionally by the wineshops in the town, where 
they inflamed their intoxication, and from which they soon returned 
to their comrades, to renew their ferocious and menacing cries, 
increasing the confusion and alarm by constant firing. Still, while 
the darkness continued, they were kept at a safe distance ; but, at 
daybreak, one of the gates leading into a square of the palace, 
known as the Prince's Court, was observed to be open. It had 
been entrusted to the care of the national guard, and could not 
have been opened without treachery. The crowd poured in ; there 
was nothing between them and the staircase, which led to the 
apartments in which the royal family were sleeping; but two 
gallant gentlemen, M. des Huttes and M. Moreau, the sentries of 



454 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 178y. 

the detachment of the body-guard on duty: so dauntlessly did 
these officers stand to their posts, that for a moment the ruffians 
recoiled before them, till d'Orleans himself came forward, and 
pointed out to them the way which he desired they should take. 
Then they rushed on to the charge; and what could two men 
effect against such overwhelming numbers ? Des Huttes perished, 
pierced by a hundred pikes, and torn to pieces by his savage 
assailants. Moreau, with equal valour, but with better fortune, 
retreated up the stairs, fighting so desperately that he gave his 
comrades time to barricade the doors of the queen's apartment, 
and to come to his assistance. As they drew him back, terribly 
wounded, De Varicour, Durepaire, and Miomandre took his place, 
(the few brave and loyal men whom France could boast well 
deserve to have their names recorded), and shared his fate. De 
Varicour was soon slain : Durepaire was disabled by repeated 
wounds ; but Miomandre succeeded in procuring a respite, which, 
though brief, was sufficient for his object : in spite of his gallantry 
and skill in arms, he was gradually forced back, by the number of 
his assailants, through an open doorway ; but he turned that into 
a fresh post of defence, and, placing his musket across it, kept his 
enemies at bay, while he shouted to the queen's ladies, who were 
now separated from him but by a single partition, to save the 
queen, for ' the tigers with whom he was struggling were aiming 
at her life.' In the annals of the days of chivalry it had been 
recorded, as the most brilliant exploit of Bayard, that, single- 
handed, on a bridge over the Garigliano, he had for a while 
checked the onset of 200 Spaniards ; and his gallantry and self- 
devotion had never been more faithfully copied or more nobly 
rivalled than it was on this morning of shame and danger by 
Miomandre and his heroic comrades, who were thus fighting, 
without hope, against those whom he truly called not men but 
tigers. At last he, too, was struck down, covered with wounds ; 
but he had gained time for the escape of his royal mistress. Her 
ladies had roused her from bed, for the fiitigue of the previous day 
had been so great that she had hitherto slept soundly through the 
uproar, and had hurried her off to the king's apartments. In a few 
minutes the whole family was collected in safety in his ante-room ; 
the remnant of the body-guard having occupied the queen's bed- 
room, through which alone the insurgents could advance ; though, 
in fact, the greater part of them had turned aside to pillage the 
armoury and other chambers which were left at their mercy. 

Meanwhile some of the nobles had brought back the natioiial 
guard to a sense of their duty. Lafayette was, luckily, not 
there : (it was eight o'clock before he arrived, pretending to have 
heard nothing of the attack on the palace, which, in his position, 



A.D. 1789.] HEROISM OF THE QUEEN. 455 

no one but a traitor ivoiild have left for a moment) ; and, when, 
removed from his pernicious influence, his soldiers were shamed 
into a return to lo3ralty by the just reproaches of the Marquis de 
Vaudreuil and others of his fellow nobles, who went down fearlessly 
among them to perform the duty that belonged to the general. 
Traditions of old achievements were dearly cherished in the dif- 
ferent corps of the Frencb army, and the national guard were now 
brought to remember how ' the body-guard/ as they said, ' had 
saved them at Fontenoy.' They united with the remnant, which 
was still the object of fierce attacks, exchanging schakos, sashes, and 
sometimes arms, with them, in token of their brotherly union ; and, 
in one case, charging the rioters, who had seized three of the body- 
guard, and were dragging them off to murder them under the king's 
eyes, they scattered the rioters, and brought the prisoners off 
unhurt, though ropes were already round their necks. Baulked 
of their expected prey, the assassins grew more furious, firing, in 
their wrath, useless shots against the walls of the palace, and 
shouting for the queen to show herself. 

Everything depended on the queen. The king, though indif- 
ferent to personal danger, was too perplexed and irresolute to give 
directions. Necker, who, in the agitations of the last few months, 
had been again dismissed and again replaced in his office, sat, in 
an agony of terror, with his face buried in his hands, unable even 
to offer advice. She alone was undaunted ; or, at least, if, in the 
depths of her womanly heart, she felt terror at the sanguinary and 
obscene threats of her ruffianly enemies, she scorned to show it. 
As the firing grew fiercer, M. de la Luzerne, the minister of 
marine, placed himself between her and the window ; but, while 
she thanked him for his devotion, she desired him to retire, saying, 
with her habitually gracious courtesy, that the king could not 
aftbrd to have so faithful a servant endangered. And now, holding 
her little son and daughter, one in each hand, she stepped out on 
the balcony to confront those who were shouting for her destruc- 
tion. ' No children/ was their cry. She led the infants back into 
the room, and, returning, stood before the mob, alone, with arms 
crossed, and eyes looking up to heaven, as one who expected 
instant death. Even those worthless miscreants were awed or 
shamed by her sublime magnanimity. Not a shot was fired at 
her; but the mob began to raise a new shout, which embodied the 
original object which, with the generality of the rioters, had 
prompted the march to Versailles. ' To Paris,' was their new cry ; 
and Lafayette urged the king to comply with the demand. lie 
accepted the advice, it may be doubted whether he had the power 
to reject it, and, soon after midday, lie, with his whole family, 
quitted Versailles, which neither himself nor the queen were ever 



456 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1789. 

to behold again, and took up their residence in Paris, henceforth 
their prison and their grave. 

In one sense the Revolution was over. The king, who had 
already been stripped of all his most indispensable prerogatives, 
even of that which made his consent necessary to the enactment 
of a new law, was now a captive in the hands of his rebellious 
subjects; whose daily insolence showed a resolution not to allow 
him for a moment to blind himself to his true position. And 
his escape from that position was rendered hopeless by the das- 
tardly flight of most of those to whom they might have looked 
for support. It has been already mentioned that, several weeks 
before, the king's youngest brother, the Count d'Artois, vsdth a 
few of the chief nobles, had fled to foreign tountries ; and now, 
when the recent atrocities showed that the only hope of saving 
the monarchy lay in the prompt and vigorous co-operation of all 
the friends of order and humanity, the great majority of those 
who might have been expected to put themselves at the head of 
such a movement fled panic stricken, having no thought for any- 
thing but their personal safety. Even Mounier, a deputy whose 
weight in the assembly had been such that he had been appointed 
president of the committee entrusted with the framing of the new 
constitution, feared to trust himself among the Parisians, who 
evidently designed to make themselves masters of the assembly 
and of the king : he resigned his seat in the assembly, and fled 
from France : before the end of the year three hundred depu- 
ties had followed his example, and there was scarcely one 
member left to raise his voice against the wildest or wickedest 
schemes that might be proposed. The inhuman barbarity of the 
populace in the riots which, during this and the subsequent years, 
disgraced the difl'erent provinces ; the sanguinary ferocity in 
which the leaders of the mob founded their power; the craven 
baseness with which the people in general submitted to their 
atrocious guidance, have often been pointed to as proofs of the 
universal demoralisation which had overspread the countiy. But 
no evidence of it is so convincing and so sad as this emigration of 
those who ought to have regarded it, as their fathers would have 
regarded it, as their first duty to stand by their king, but who 
now, on the first sight of his danger, regarded nothing but their 
own peril, fled from the contest, and so rendei-ed a termination of 
it which should be honorable or even safe for him, almost im- 
possible. Nor did they injure him only passively by their deser- 
tion ; their conduct in the foreign countries to which they fled was 
incessantly such as to arm his enemies with pretexts for denouncing 
his sincerity. They intrigued with those whom they left behind ; 
they were unwearied in their endeavours to induce others to follow 



A.D. 1789.] MIRABEAU'S CHANGE OF POLICY. 457 

their example, even after the assembly had passed a law declaring 
emigration a crime against the state ; and, when at last the 
German sovereigns declared war against France, they put them- 
selves in communication with the avowed enemies of the countiy, 
and made no concealment of their eagerness for the success of the 
foreign invasion : an eagerness which it was not difficult for the 
personal enemies of Louis himself to represent as shared by him, 
even if their conduct was not guided by his secret suggestions. 

It was but a doubtful compensation for this desertion of the 
king by those who never ought to have left his side, that the same 
attack on his palace which had :*ndered him in eft'ect a prisoner, 
had inclined the man who had the greatest share in organising 
that attack to change his party, and to range himself among the 
champions of the court. Mirabeau's politics had throughout been 
dictated by selfish considerations. It was a desire to revenge him- 
self on the nobles for their rejection of his claim to represent them 
in the states-general that had dictated many of the most violent 
measures which he had recommended to the assembly, and had 
inspired some of his fiercest speeches. It was again a resolution 
to punish Necker, as the king's minister, for the slighting refusal of 
his offers of co-operation, that had led him to sell himself to the 
Duke of Orleans ; for his necessities, caused by his long course of 
profligacy, had made it impossible for him to play a disinterested 
part. But, selfish and corrupt as he was, and utterly unscru- 
pulous in the means which he took to secure his ends, he had, 
almost alone of his countrymen, a statesmanlike mind. He had 
from the first proposed to himself, as the object at which all 
Frenchmen should aim, the establishment of a constitution which, 
in all its fundamental features, sliould resemble that of England ; 
and, though at first he saw no reason why such a change should 
be incompatible with the maintenance of the gentle and amiable 
Louis on the throne, yet, when rebuffed by Necker, lie remembered, 
as has been mentioned, that the English revolution which he 
desired to copy had transferred the allegiance of the people to the 
next prince of the blood royal. And he saw some advantage in 
the future sovereigns, like their brethren of England, resting their 
claims to obedience on a parliamentary title. 

But though d'Orleans gladly bought his assistance at his own 
price, a very short acquaintance with that infamous prince con- 
vinced Mirabeau that he was not the man to become the hero of a 
successful revolution. The count's past life showed that he was 
not likely to be disgusted at the duke's profligacy and wickedness : 
many of his subsequent acts showed that he was as little fettered 
by any scruples of humanity ; but he found his new chief false, 
treacherous, and cowardly. Tbe duke could not deal fairly even 
21 



458 MODERN IIISTOEY. [a.d. 1789. 

witli his own partisans. In one of the early riots he was found to 
liave taken care of his personal safety by clothes so thickly quilted 
as to be dagger-proof. In the attack on Versailles, even while 
indicating the royal apartments to the intended murderers, he had 
shown such anxiety to keep himself out of danger that Mirabeau 
attributed the eventual preservation of the king and queen mainly 
to his timidity and irresolution ; and when, a week after the royal 
family had established themselves in Paris, Lafayette, who had 
detected the duke in a plot for his own assassination, threatened to 
denounce him if he did not quit the kingdom ; and he fled unre- 
sistingly, disguising the cause of*his departure by a passport from 
the minister, as if he were charged with a diplomatic mission ; 
Mirabeau, declaring that he had every quality of a great criminal 
but the courage, separated himself from him ; and began to pave 
his way for a reconciliation with the court, which, as he well 
divined, had by this time seen too much of his power to reject 
him again ; and to direct all his efibrts to preserve for the reigning 
monarch the power which the example of England proved to be 
quite consistent with the enjoyment of the most perfect liberty on 
the part of the subject. 

An union, however, with the sovereign of whom he had so 
lately been the most forward and most conspicuous assailant 
required time ; and meanwhile events were advancing with a 
rapidity which every day left less and less of the royal authority 
to save. One day the assembly abolished the parliament; and 
perhaps no more significant proof could be afforded of the extent 
to which the transactions of the last four months had overturned 
all the former conditions and principles of government than that 
the most judicious friends of the monarchy should have come to 
regard that most turbulent body, which had been the chief anta- 
gonist of every king or minister for centuries, as a possible sup- 
port of the throne in the existing and impending contests, and as 
such to lament its annihilation. Another day the old division of 
the kingdom into provinces was swept away, the ancient names 
of the provinces themselves were suppressed, and the kingdom 
was divided into eighty-three departments ; without a single voice 
being raised in defence of a system with which so many of tlie old 
recollections of the country were indissoliibly bound up, that it 
might have been foreseen that its extinction could not be accom- 
plished without exciting great discontent ; while in this excited 
state of public feeling discontent was sure to break out in fearful 
riots and outrages. Accordingly, many of the provinces soon 
became the scene of tumults, such as the worst disturbance of 
former ages could not parallel. However dissimilar in feelings 
and fashions, the citizens of the different districts had formerly 



A.D. 178y.] THE KING SANCTIONS THE CONSTITUTION. 459 

been, all were now in this respect alike, that one uniform ferocity 
had seized tlie whole people ; and, wherever they rose, they broke 
open the prisons, massacred the magistrates, and terrified the 
peaceable inhabitants by processions, in which the mangled bodies 
of their victims formed the most conspicuous feature. In some 
garrison towns the soldiers, in the seaports the sailors mutinied, 
and brought their skilled ferocity to aggravate the untaught 
savageness of the mob. Nor was it the least miserable character- 
istic of the times, that deputies in the assembly were found to excuse 
and even justify these horrors, as if they thought every considera- 
tion of religion or humanity second to the grand object of showing 
the king and his ministers their complete helplessness. 

And while anarchy was thus raging unchecked, the legislative 
committee of the assembly scarcely condescended to the farce of 
considering the constitution which they had been appointed to 
frame ; but preferred employing Lafayette to work on the imbecile 
Necker, to bind the king- to the sanction of the constitution before 
one half of it had been even put on paper. The queen, whom in 
all probability the mere fact of the scheme being suggested by 
Lafayette was sufficient to convince of its mischievous tendency, 
pointed out to her husband, with irresistible force, the impolicy of 
declaring a blind acceptance of measures hereafter to be framed 
by a body of men among whom he had hardly one friend ; and for 
a moment he agreed with her, and rejected the insidious scheme : 
but it was his fate never to adhere to a wise decision, and, in 
February 1790 he went down to the assembly, and in a set speech 
declared his approval of all that had been done in the way of 
constitutional legislation, and his confidence of being able to 
approve all that should be done hereafter. Such an act was an 
attempt to propitiate his enemies by disarming himself 5 but the 
assembly was not contented with that, but resolved to make his 
weakness a means of disarming his remaining supporters also. 
The majority proceeded to vote that the whole body should at 
once take an oath of fidelity to the constitution ; and, as most of 
the loyalist or moderate parties who remained refused thus to 
bind themselves to maintain they knew not what, they were com- 
pelled to resign their seats, and the cause of order, little as it 
could afford any loss of strength, was further weakened by their 
secession. 

Louis himself might perhaps have adhered to his original reso- 
lution, had he foreseen that the very next article of the constitu- 
tion to be proposed was the abolition of all titles and orders of 
nobility, which in all ages and countries have been looked on as 
indispensable bulwarks of royal rank and sovereign power. It 
was passed almost without discussion ; indeed, each successive 



460 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1790. 

step on the road of destruction gave the destroying party such 
additional encouragement, that those who would fain have said 
a word in favour of any old institution could not obtain a hearing. 
The extinction of the rights of primogeniture was carried with 
equal unanimity, or at least with equal absence of opposition. Even 
Necker and his colleagues in the ministry were silent and acqui- 
escent; Necker seeming as eager- to surrender as the most violent 
revolutionist could be eager to seize. Even when, in May, the 
assembly passed a resolution to take the power of declaring peace 
and war from the king, and to vest it in themselves, though that 
prerogative had been universally considered as inseparable from 
the sovereign in every country, Necker could not be induced to 
raise his voice in defence of his royal master ; but sat by, in sullen 
apathy, as if, now that he himself had ceased to be popular and 
flattered, nothing was left that could be worth a struggle. 

And it may be doubted whether Necker's guilty inaction was 
compensated to the king and queen by the unwearied zeal in their 
cause with which these measures inspired Mirabeau ; or whether 
his co-operation brought or could have brought them any prac- 
tical advantage. He was no longer master of the assembly, sway- 
ing its deliberations as he had been able to sway them at first. 
On-the contrary, though on the question of stripping the crown of 
the power of peace and war, he had exerted himself with great 
energy and the utmost cogency of argument, he had scarcely 
carried a vote with him. Nor was he able to save the king from 
attendance at the festival which the chief demagogues had deter- 
mined to hold in the Champ de Mars, on the anniversary of the 
destruction of the Bastille, which the selection of that particular 
day proved to be intended as an insult to the crown, and which 
wa3 rendered more conspicuously insulting by a measure adopted 
by the assembly as the most becoming preliminary to such a cere- 
mony. A Prussian, of the name of Klootz, who had obtained 
admission to the Jacobin club, and who, to show his affinity to the 
philosophers of old, had christened himself Anacharsis, having 
dressed up a gang of vagrants and idlers in a variety of costumes, 
intended to represent Arabs, Red Indians, Tiirks, Chinese, Lap- 
landers, and other nations, savage or civilised, led them into the 
assembly as a deputation from all the nations of the earth, to 
announce the deliverance of the whole world from the shackles 
of slavery and superstition. The assembly received them with en- 
thusiasm, the president making them a speech expressive of his 
gratitude for the honour done to France by such an embassy ; 
And, as soon as he had sat down, a young noble, named Alexander 
Lameth, who, with his brother, was under the deepest per- 
sonal obligations to Louis, which, from the first opening of the 



A.D, 1790.] THE MEETING IN THE CHAMP DE MAES. 461 

states-general, he had repaid with, the most bitter enmity and 
insolence, proposed that, as such holy pilgrims could not fail to be 
shocked by the monuments of despotism, the people should at 
once destroy the statues of their ancient kings, and especially one 
of Louis XIV., which bore on the pedestal emblems of the nations 
which had been subjugated by that vain-glorious monarch. A 
ceremony thus inaugurated by such wanton outrages on the 
memory of his ancestors could be fraught with nothing but humi- 
liation to their hapless descendant, who was to be compelled once 
more to swear to the constitution, which the assembly did not yet 
profess to have completed, in unison with the representatives of the 
different departments of the Church and of the army, whom the 
ceremony was especially intended to bind to the new order of 
things. He was not even allowed to wear his roj'al robes j and, 
instead of the elevated throne on which former kings of France 
hfid sate while all around them stood, the seat which was pro- 
vided for him was matched by another on the same level, placed 
not for the queen, but for the president of the assembly. 

Such a scene had only strengthened Mirabeau in the conviction 
which he had expressed to the king in more than one interview 
with him to which he had recently been admitted, that, if any 
degree whatever of the royal authority was to be recovered or 
preserved, that result could only be accomplished by the emanci- 
pation of the king and the government from the control of the 
assembly and the Parisian populace. And he recommended that 
Louis, who was spending the summer at St.-Cloud, should at once 
quit the neighbourhood of the capital, and retire to some strongly 
fortified town, where he might call around him troops on whom 
he could rely, and, supported by them, might annul the most per- 
nicious resolutions which the assembly had passed ; the majority 
of which were notoriously illegal in form; after which he might 
dissolve the assembly itself, and summon another which, from the 
discontent felt by the majority of the provincial electors at most 
of the recent proceedings, might be expected to prove more reason- 
able and manageable. And he proposed to remain in Paris him- 
self, to prevent the assembly from taking any instant steps to 
show its dissatisfaction, or, if his arguments could not prevail, 
then to overawe the assembly by means of the populace, over 
which he still believed his authority to be undiminished. How 
correct was his judgment of the necessity of such a measure was 
proved by the events of the next summer. But though the queen, 
on whose acuteness and courage Mirabeau placed his chief reliance 
fully agreed in the prudence and safety of the proposed removal, 
nothing could induce Louis to consent to an act which seemed to 
him likely to be the first step in civil war. And when, at last, he 



462 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1791. 

■was forced to admit that tliere was no other hope of safety for 
him, and to consent to it, Mirabeau, who had planned it, and who 
believed that he could have ensured its success, was in his grave. 

Meanwhile, every succeeding occurrence tore away some rem- 
nant of the royal authority. The retirement of Necker, who in the 
autumn resigned his office, pleading partly the weakness of his 
own health, and partly ' the mortal anxieties of his wife, as vir- 
tuous as she was dear to his heart,' was not in itself an injury to 
it, so utterly unfit for such a post in times of difficulty had all 
his actions shown him from the first moment of his resumption of 
office. But it was a wanton insult to his royal master that he 
should have chosen to address his resignation, not to him from 
whom he had received his appointment, but to the president of 
the assembly, to whom he owed no responsibility. And it was a 
sad proof of the utter helplessness to which Louis was reduced, 
that he was not able to select his successor, and the successors to 
most of his colleagues who withdrew at the same time, according 
to his own judgment, but that he was forced to submit to the 
dictation of the leaders of the assembly, and in two instances to 
that of Lafayette himself, who had now for some time seemed to 
take a personal delight in treating him, and still more in treating 
the queen, with the grossest and most unmanly insolence. 

Probably the deepest mortification which Louis felt, was when 
he was compelled to give his assent to a new ecclesiastical con- 
stitution, which the assembly completed in the autumn, and which, 
among other stipulations, deprived both himself and the Pope of 
their ecclesiastical patronage, and placed the Church in a position 
of general subordination to the civil law. For he knew that the 
clergy would look on submission to such a law as sacrilege. And 
in fact, though their lives were threatened, and though the mob 
sought to terrify them with threats of hanging them to the lamp- 
posts, not a sixth of' the whole body could be induced to take the 
oath to observe it, and the rest were instantly deprived of their 
preferments and reduced to beggary. Their deprivation was an- 
other blow to the throne, of which the Church seemed one of the 
most natural bulwarks ; and an additional encouragement to the 
promoters of disorder. And throughout the winter the mob acted 
as if they were lords of Paris and of France 5 often murdering 
those whom they called aristocrats in the streets, and on one occa- 
sion organising a mob on a large scale, and attacking the castle at 
Vincennes, in order to make it share the fate of the Bastille. For 
once Lafayette summoned courage to resist them ; and, bringing 
down the national guard to its protection, saved the old fortress, 
though he feared so to risk his popularity as to punish a number 
of his soldiers who had mutinied and refused to act against the 



A.D. 1791.J DEATH OF MIEABEAU. 463 

rioters. He had been dismayed by a cry wbich he bad beard 
among the rioters, ' Down with Lafayette ! ' And to recover the 
favour of the mob, be now preferred counterbalancing his opposi- 
tion to their will by an insult to the king ; for at the first intelli- 
gence of the outbreak, a number of nobles had armed themselves, 
and hastened to the Tuileries, to protect the king and queen. It 
was not strange that Louis and Marie Antionette, long unused to 
such a display of attachment and loyalty, should have received 
them graciously and gratefully ; but, when Lafayette arrived in 
the afternoon, he reproached them with interfering with the duty 
of his own troops, disarmed them, drove them from the palace ; and 
the next day published a general order, in which he pronounced 
their zeal in the king's defence ' a dangerous conspiracy,' and en- 
joined the guards at the Tuileries to refuse their entrance to the 
royal presence in future. 'The king of the constitution ought 
not,' he said, to be surrounded by any ' defenders, but the soldiers 
of liberty.' 

He was soon to give a further proof of the protection which 
he and his soldiers of liberty were prepared to afford him to 
whom be still gave the name of king. At the beginning of 
April Mirabeau died, after a short illness, the fruit of his early 
intemperance ; and the news of his danger awakened such an un- 
exampled demonstration of public feeling, as may perhaps be taken 
to prove that, in spite of his having been occasionally overruled 
in the assembly by the more violent revolutionists, he had not 
overrated his influence over the nation at large, when he affirmed 
himself &till able to save the king and the monarchy. The whole 
street in which he lived was crowded from morning to night witb 
eagerness for news of his state. Bulletins were issued three and 
four times a day. And when at last all was over, it seemed as 
if for a moment the whole nation was sobered by the shock. 
All business, and even all amusement was stopped. The national 
assembly was adjourned ; the theatres were closed. He lay in 
state, as the ancient kings had lain ; and was borne to the grave 
with a pomp which might have befitted the proudest sovereign. 
The church of Ste.-Genevieve, in which he was laid, was even re- 
named for the occasion ; a formal decree of the assembly ordering 
it to be henceforth called the Pantheon, and appropriated as a 
cemetery for such of her illustrious sons as France might hereafter 
think deserving of the national gratitude. And these compliments 
were the more extraordinary because they were the first instance 
of funeral honours being conferred on an orator and a statesman, 
which had hitherto been confined to the heroes of the sword. 

Whether, if he had lived, Mirabeau would have been able to 
re-establish the sovereign in an efficient constitutional authority 



464 MODERN HISTORY. A.n. 1791. 

or not, the events of tlie next three months sadly proved that no 
other person had either the power or the inclination. He had 
hardly been a fortnight in his grave, when the mob stopped the 
king's carriage, and refused to allow him to remove with his family 
to St.-Cloud, where he desired to Spend Easter, as a place by its 
comparative seclusion and tranquillity more suited to the holy 
meditations appropriate to the season, and to his own perilous 
situation, than the turbulent city. The national guards united 
with the populace, paying no attention whatever to the orders 
which Lafayette issued to them, but which he took no trouble to 
enforce ; and when, the next day, Louis complained to the as- 
sembly of the outrage, that body treated his remonstrance with 
the most contemptuous neglect. Everyone seemed rather to exult 
in the proof thus given to the world, that their king was in truth 
their prisoner ; and before the end of the month the assembly even 
made public proclamation of the fact, passing a decree to prohibit 
his moving at any time more than twenty leagues from Paris. 

So obvious, indeed, had the true character of his position now 
become to Louis himself, that he at last decided on adopting the 
plan which he had rejected the year before of trying to escape to 
the frontier. He had still trusty friends , of a sagacity sufficient 
to make the arrangements calculated to secure the success of so 
difficult an enterprise, and of a devotion which thought nothing 
of the personal danger to which they themselves should be exposed 
both from the populace and the assembly, provided they could 
ensure the safety of their king and queen. Few things in the 
history of the whole revolution are stranger than that the plan 
should have so nearly succeeded, and that it should have failed 
when its success seemed to be accomplished. For it required 
several weeks to arrange in all its details, and was necessarily con- 
fided to many agents. And Lafayette had latterly, without any 
orders, but prompted apparently by a wanton desire to show the 
sovereigns how completely they were in his power, and partly by 
an eagerness to regain the favour of the mob by a parade of his 
willingness to perform the most degrading offices, taken upon him- 
self to visit the Tuileries and the royal apartments every evening, 
to assure himself of the presence of the royal family. But their 
secret was kept ; the vigilance of their self-appointed gaoler was 
baffled. And on the twentieth of June the whole family quitted 
the Tuileries and Paris in safety ; and, taking the road to Montniedy, 
a small town on the frontier of Luxembourg, proceeded 100 miles 
without interruption, and reached Varennes, a village on the Aisne, 
where the last relay of horses was awaiting them, which was to 
convey them to the headquarters of the Marquis de Bouille, the 
officer who of the whole French army had the highest reputation 



A.D. 1791.] THE KING IS STOPPED AT VARENNES. 465 

for professional ability and past services, and wlio was tlie 
commander-in-chief of the western provinces. Unhappily, at 
Varennes the arrangements were less complete than they had been 
at other places. The outriders, three of the heroic old body- 
guard, who had fought so gallantly at Versailles, had not been in- 
formed where to find the relays ; a few minutes were lost in mak- 
ing the enquiries, and those few minutes sufficed to ruin everything. 
The king had been recognised as he passed through Ste.-Menehould, 
a town a few miles back ; and the man, who had recognised him, 
the postmaster of the place, mounted his horse and overtook the 
fugitives while halting at Varennes, armed with orders from the 
municipal magistrates to arrest their further progTess. He raised 
the populace, who were deeply infected with the worst revolu- 
tionary principles : called out the national guard : compelled the 
king and queen to follow him to the mayor's house. And now 
they were more prisoners than ever. 

Yet a little resolution on either their own part or that of their 
adherents would have delivered them. M. de Bouille had sta- 
tioned sixty hussars in the town, to serve as their escort as soon as 
they had passed through it : and, above 100 more arrived soon 
afterwards, a force which neither the national guards nor all the 
population of Varennes could have resisted. But the unexpected 
character of the situation seemed to have deprived every one, 
even the queen, of their presence of mind. The officers appealed 
to Louis for orders, who replied that he was a prisoner, and had 
no orders to give : and they had not the sense or resolution to 
perceive that the fact of his being a prisoner was itself an order 
to effect his deliverance. While Marie Antoinette herself, to 
whose vigour and readiness much of the success of the expedition 
had hitherto been owing, was, as it were, panic-stricken at her dis- 
appointment, and was for the moment capable of no further exer- 
tion than that of imploring the mayor's wife to use her influence 
with her husband to allow them to proceed, which he had not the 
courage to do. Presently, an aide-de-camp of Lafayette arrived, 
with orders to seize the king wherever he might be found, and 
to bring him to Paris. Louis obeyed without resistance : and in 
little more than an hour he and his family were on their way back 
to Paris. When they reached the suburbs, the carriage was con- 
ducted, by a circuitous route, to the Champs Elysees, that they 
might be led in triumph down that noble avenue ; as they passed 
on they were assailed by the threatening shouts of the rabble, who 
mounted on the steps, and, looking in at the windows, announced 
their eagerness to murder them on the spot: and when, as they 
approached the gardens of the Tuileries, Lafayette received the 
carriage with a detachment of his national guards, they might well 



466 MODERN HISTOllY. [a.d. 1731. 

feel that all hope was over for them. In truth, the lowest officials 
of the courts of justice could hardly have taken a keener delight in 
heaping insults on his sovereigns than this man of noble birth. 
He was under no one's orders ; but he compelled even the queen 
to give him up her keys, that he might search her boxes ; he placed 
sentinels along every passage in the palace, and, that his prisoners 
might be always in their sight, he ordered the doors of every 
room to be kept open day and night : not even the queen's bed- 
chamber was allowed to be closed, except for a brief space in the 
morning while she was dressing. He refused their friends access 
to them ; taking upon himself even to exclude those members of 
the assembly who were still favorable to the royal cause, and to 
whom their very character of representatives of the people gave a 
legal right to approach their king. 

For in the assembly the act of the king in withdrawing from 
Paris had given rise to fierce debates. As soon as the news of his 
arrest at Varennes had reached it, they had despatched three of 
the deputies to bdug tliem back to Paris ; one of whom Barnave, 
the most eloquent member of the whole body since the death of 
Mirabeau, had his sympathies so excited by the dignity and help- 
lessness of the royal prisoners that from that time forth he became 
their champion. And they had need of an eloquent advocate j 
for the Jacobin members, headed by Robespierre, one of the re- 
presentatives of Arras, who at one of the first meetings of the 
assembly had put himself forward as the denouncer of the clergy, 
and had ever since been the supporter of all the most violent 
measures that had been adopted, now clamoured for the trial of 
Louis, avowing at the same time their resolution that his trial 
should end in his death. But Barnave, in reply, far surpassed him 
in vigour of declamation, and overturned every one of his argu- 
ments ; proving irresistibly that the personal inviolability of the 
king was an essential article of even the new constitution. 
So powerful was his eloquence that it even converted one large 
body of deputies who had come down to the assembly with the 
intention of supporting Robespierre ; and eventually he brought 
the assembly to adopt his view that the king's intention and act 
In quitting Paris had been innocent, and had furnished no pre- 
tence for proceeding against him. 

Robespierre was furious at his defeat, and tried, by exciting a 
riot on a larger scale than had yet been witnessed, to overawe the 
assembly, and to extort from their fears what Barnave had 
induced their reason to refuse him : 100,000 men were to meet in 
the Champ de Mars to sign a petition for the king's dethronement ; 
but they began with such deeds of violence and bloodshed that 
the natioual guard turned against them, fired on them, killing no 



A.B. 1791.] DISSOLUTION OF THE ASSEMBLY. 467 

inconsiderable number, and were so exasperated at the whole 
conduct of the mob, that, while Robespierre, who was as cowardly 
as he was sanguinary, fled in dismay, and sought shelter at 
Madame Roland's, they demanded leave of Lafayette to close by 
force the Jacobin and Cordelier clubs. But Lafayette was not 
willing to forfeit his popularity even with the Jacobins : he could 
foresee that he might still be glad of their aid against the king, as 
above all other objects that club was pledged to the destruction 
of the monarchy ,• and he could not anticipate that before long it 
would be planning and perpetrating atrocities such as even he 
would shudder at, and that his resistance to their crimes would 
then render him as obnoxious to them as Louis himself. 

But, though the Jacobins were thus saved, the existence of the 
assembly itself was drawing to a close. The first article of the 
constitution had fixed its duration at two years, whicb were on 
the point of expiring : and once more the king was to announce 
his acceptance of the constitution, and once more the ceremony 
was to be made the occasion of fresh personal insults to him. 
Every mark of respect was studiously withheld from hitnj and 
so multiplied and marked were the slights which were put on 
him that they at last overpowered even his calmness, and when he 
returned to his apartments he could not refrain from bitter tears, 
imploring pardon of the queen for having brought her into France 
for such degradation. A small party among the populace had 
cheered his carriage as it passed through the streets ; but the real 
feeling of the majority was more clearly shown by the reception 
they gave the different deputies, as lliey quitted the house of 
assembly after its dissolution had been declared. Barnave and 
those who had of late put themselves forward as advocates of the 
royal cause were hooted, and with difficulty protected from 
assault ; but Robespierre and others of the chief Jacobins, who 
had openly avowed their desire for the destruction of Monarchy 
and monarch, were crowned with oaken chaplets, and the horses 
were taken from their carriages that their fellow-citizens might 
draw them in triumph to their homes. It was, indeed, an omen of 
evil, not only for the royal family, but for the whole nation, that 
the favour of the Parisians, whom its situation in the midst of 
them rendered masters of the assembly, should be only to be won 
by bloodthirsty ravings and clamours for universal massacre and 
destruction. 

In the debate on the king's journey to Varennes, Barnave, as 
we have seen, had persuaded the assembly to recognise the 
personal inviolability of the king as a fundamental article of the 
constitution. But the fact of his having been forcibly arrested on 
his journey, and brought back to Paris as a prisoner, gave the lie 



468 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1791. 

to that acknowledgement with terrible plainness ; and there were 
probably few among the friends of the royal family who now 
entertained any sanguine hope of being able to secure their safety. 
If any did, the sovereigns themselves were certainly not of the 
number. When they were first compelled to exchange Versailles 
for the Tuileries, the comment on their treatment made by Marie 
Antoinette had been that they were probably dragged in to their 
death, for that captive sovereigns were never far from it : and it 
was not easy to interpret the sanction given by the assembly to 
the outrages to which they had been exposed at Varennes, and to 
Lafayette's subsequent treatment of them, but as an indication of 
a resolution that they should not be allowed to escape from the 
fate which was preparing for them. 

It soon became equally plain that the imminence of their 
danger was greatly increased by the composition of the new 
assembly. In that which had been dissolved/ in spite of the 
emigration which had so cruelly thinned their numbers, there had 
been to the last a remnant not only of the constitutional party, 
which desired to establish a limited inonarchy under the reigning 
king, but even of the royalist party, who thought all restriction? 
an infringement of his just authority and dignity. Had not these 
latter, looking on themselves as the personal champions of the 
king and queen, with a most fatal blindness and obstinacy, refused 
to co-operate with the constitutionalists, their combined forces 
might, on more than one occasion, have prevented the enactment 
of some of the most mischievous laws that had been passed ; they 
might even before the dissolution have procured their repeal. 
Still, jealous of one another as the two parties were, their pre- 
sence had been some protection to Louis. But from the new 
assembly, the royalists were entirely absent, while the numbers 
of the constitutionalists -were greatly weakened. Remembering 
Cromwell's self-denying ordinance in the English Rebellion, Robes- 
pierre, in one of the last meetings of the old assembly, had 
succeeded in carrying a resolution which declared all its members 
ineligible for re-election. He did not propose, as Cromwell had 
managed his affairs, to secure an exception in his own favour ,■ but 
was content to be deprived of a seat himself, if he could thus 
exclude all the friends of monarchy, since he had no doubt that, as 
the leader of the Jacobin club, he should be able not only to 
influence the new elections over the greater part of the kingdom, 
but even to rule the assembly itself. The resolution could not 
fail to produce great mischief; excluding from the legislative 
body, ae it did, every councillor of experience: and the new 

' As having drawn up the constitution, it is sometimes described as ' the 
Constituent Assembly.' 



A.D. 1791.] RISE OF THE G-IRONDINS. 469 

representatives were of a class worse than probably anyone but 
Robespierre himself had anticipated. Scarcely a dozen were of 
noble birth ; the number of ecclesiastics was equally small. The 
absence of wealth was equally conspicuous : it was reckoned that 
not one in fifteen possessed an income exceeding 2,000 francs, or 
80/. a year ; and the youth of the majority was as remarkable as 
any other feature. Of elderly men there were scarcely any ; half 
were imder middle age, and many were little more than boys. At 
the first meeting, sixty of those who were present were found to 
be under twenty-five. From such a body so composed, what 
soberness of mind, what prudence in action, what respect for 
authority, what submission to established principles, what deference 
to experience, could be expected ? 

Especially dangerous to the king was the appearance in strength 
of a new party, originally a section of the Jacobin club, which 
now, from the circumstance of many of its members coming from 
the Gironde, one of the departments which had been carved out of 
the old province of Gascony, began to be called the Girondins. 
They were all men of low birth, of needy circumstances, sordid 
and corrupt to the last degree ; as imscrupulous as the fiercest 
Jacobins, and even more odious, as veiling their cruelty under the 
mask of a certain unintelligible jargon of philosophy, and fatally 
aided in the prosecution of their designs by a fluent and at times 
vigorous eloquence, in which they far surpassed all the rest of the 
new assembl3^ They were not, indeed, at first inspired by any fixed 
hostility to the king. On the contrary, if they could have made 
a sufficient market of his necessities, they would willingly have 
supported him ; and as soon as a few debates and divisions had 
shown their power, the chiefs, among whom Vergniaud, Guadet, 
and Brissot were the most prominent, proposed to M. de Lessart, 
the minister of the interior, to bind themselves to the support of 
the government and of the royal cause, if he would bribe them 
to loyalty with an income of 3,000/. a year to each of them.* He 
refused, with more dignity than practical wisdom ; and, exasperated 
at this disappointment of their covetous expectations, they resolved 
to revenge themselves on the minister's master, and from that time 
forth labomed for the destruction of the king with all the zeal of 
republican fury exasperated by personal resentment. They began 
with the most paltry insults ; carrying votes that the king should 
have a seat in the assembly inferior to that of the president; and 
that he should no longer be called Majesty or Sire, though in this 

1 6,000 francs a month was the rien debattre de leur demande, cette 

exact sum named. 'Mais M. de ne'gociation n'eut aucune suite.' — 3Ie- 

Lessart trouvait que c'etait les payer moires de Bertrand de MoleviUe, ii. 

bicii cher : ct commc ik nc voulaient iJoG. 



170 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1792. 

degradation they gave liim companions, and those no other than 
themselves, abolishing the practice which, in imitation of the 
usage of the British parliament, had prevailed in the former 
assembly, of calling the representatives ' honorable members.' 
But such a title was now pronounced to savour of aristocracy, and 
it was ordered that for the future the deputies should be spoken 
of by their names alone. 

When such a spirit pervaded the assembly, it was impossible 
but that what remained of the royal authority should be gradually 
but rapidly pared away. Nor was the approaching result delayed 
by the circumstance of the ministers being once or twice able 
to take advantage of divisions in the assembly, and to find occa- 
sions where Louis could refuse his assent to measures which were 
recommended to no party by any consideration of their violence. 
Presently, differences arose among the ministers themselves. The 
German sovereigns, especially the Emperor, as the queen's brother, 
naturally took a deep interest in the atfairs of France ; but showed 
it by an interference in her councils, and by denunciations of the 
opponents of the court, and of the clubs, so impolitic that some of 
the ministers themselves recommended meeting them by a de- 
claration of war, and troops were moved towards the frontier, in 
preparation for hostilities. The most real danger, however, arose 
from the conduct of the emigrants, whose acts, however professedly 
dictated by a desire to serve the king, were in reality dictated by 
the most disloyal self-opinion. It was to no purpose that Louis 
commanded and implored those who had emigrated to return, and 
as earnestly remonstrated with those who, it was understood, were 
preparing to follow their example ; pointing out to them, with 
self-evident truth, that the voice of duty required them to remain 
at their posts, as he himself remained at his. In spite alike of his 
commands and of his entreaties, they kept on their own course ; 
stationing themselves in great numbers at the different towns 
within the German frontier, and keeping up ostentatiously open 
communications with those potentates who were looked on by the 
majority of Frenchmen as enemies of the nation. Conduct such 
as that, adopted in professed zeal for the royal cause, could not 
fail to raise it up fresh enemies, and to weaken its real friends. 
In the agitation which ensued, the existing ministers were driven 
from office ; and the Girondins, as the party whose now pre- 
dominant weight in the assembly had overthrown them, were 
able to dictate the nomination of their successors. The use they 
designed to make of their power was sufficiently shown by the 
selection of M. Roland as minister ot the interior, who was not 
even by his own friends regarded as a man of the very slightest 
ability ; but who was notorious for a frenzied hatred of all whom 



A.D. 1792.] CHAKACTER OF DUMOURIEZ. 471 

he called aristocrats, and still more as the husband of Madame 
Roland, the woman who, as we have seen, three years before, had 
invoked the assassination of the king and queen, and who had by 
this time acquired great influence over the whole of the Jacobin 
party, even over Robespierre himself, which she exerted with 
imtiring energy till she had accomplished the end at which she 
had so relentlessly aimed from the first, little foreseeing tbat she 
was but preparing a similar fate for herself. 

But, though they did not suspect it, one of the new ministers, 
and he the only one of the slightest capacity. General Dumouriez, 
the minister for foreign affairs, was so far from sharing their views, 
that he was honestly desirous of serving and saving the king. He 
had been so from the commencement of the Revolution, and, like 
Mirabeau, had oiFered his advice and assistance to Necker ; but, 
though his character was not open to the same objections as that 
of the dissolute count, though indeed he already enjoyed a high 
reputation as a brave and skilful officer, lie was equally rebuffed 
by that most injudicious of ministers. Driven thus against his will 
to connect himself with the opposition, for a time he seemed to 
have adopted opinions, or at least he had used language, as little 
favorable to the maintenance of the royal authority as the worst 
of the Jacobins. But now that his appointment brought him into 
daily intercourse with the king, and he came to perceive and 
appreciate the purity of his views, the feelings of mortification and 
disappointment, which had for a time excited him to seek allies 
among the enemies of the throne, yielded to his original feelings 
of loyalty ,• and he became as eager as ever to presei-ve to the king 
ample constitutional authority, looking indeed on sucb a position 
for him as indispensable to the welfai'e of the state and nation. 

He even conceived that he saw his way to such a consummation, 
if he could only become prime minister, and if he could induce 
Louis to grant him unfettered discretion in his movements as 
such, and such support as he and the queen could give him by 
their conduct and language ; and he sketched out a plan of action, 
which he explained to them in a series of interviews, by which, as 
he believed, they might gradually conciliate the more sober- 
minded part of the people, and by their favour disarm the advocates 
of violence. But he could not keep his interviews with the queen 
secret. His colleagues became suspicious of his intentions, a? they 
had from the first been jealous of his superior ability. Madame 
Roland had recourse to her favourite method, and tried to procure 
his assassination ; but her associates were not yet bold enough for 
that, and contented themselves with procuring his removal to the 
command of the army on the frontier ; while the Jacobins resolved 
to render all his efforts futile by another insurrection, of which, as 



472 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.b. 1792. 

of the attack on Versailles three years before, they were not afraid 
to give ostentatious notice beforehand. 

Dumouriez was probably not unwilling to take the command of 
the army ; for Louis had been compelled in the spring to declare 
war against Austria and Russia; the German armies were already 
in France, and be, who knew the incompetency of the Prussian 
general, the Duke of Brunswick, and who felt confident of his own 
power to defeat him, not unreasonably looked to the popularity 
which his victory would give him to enable him to save the king 
with greater effect. Yet his desire for military glory would 
possibly have yielded to his conviction of the importance of re- 
maining at hand to protect Louis, if Louis, by a sudden change 
of pui'pose, had not renounced his adherence to the policy which 
Dumouriez had marked out for him, and so driven the general to 
despair of saving him. In one respect matters looked more pro- 
mising for him than they had done a few weeks before : Dumou- 
riez had shaken off Roland and the rest of his colleagues ; and a 
new ministry had been appointed, in which he had accepted the 
lead with the office of war minister, stipulating, with the full 
concurrence of the queen, that Louis should give his assent to a 
decree which the assembly had passed • against the priests whc 
had refused their adhesion to the new ecclesiastical constitution. 
It was framed in terms of the most vindictive severity, not only 
depriving them of all their ecclesiastical income, but placing them 
under the supervision cf the magistrates like so many convicted 
criminals, and rendering them liable to banishment if, even in 
private, they should ever perform any of their clerical functions. 
And it was rendered the more odious in the eyes of all right- 
thinking people by the speech of Isnard, one of the leading 
Gircndins, though a perfumer by trade, who took occasion in 
supporting it to make a public profession of atheism, setting the 
first example of that impiety which in the course of the next two 
years became only too common. Louis, for some months, steadily 
refused his consent to the law ; but Dumouriez was convinced that 
the feeling of the assembly in its favour was so general that his 
refusal could not be persisted in with safety : his original advice 
to Louis had insisted in general terms that he must yield some 
points even of conscience in matters on which the public feeling 
was strongly pronounced : and he had brought the queen to agree 
with him on this particular question. To his urgency and his 
wife's Louis had yielded; but, before the time came for his ex- 
pressing his formal assent, the assembly passed a new resolution, 
disbanding the constitutional guard which was commanded by a 
]'esolute royalist, the Duke de Brissac, and the only body of troops 
on whose loyalty the king could now with confidence rely. Louis 



A.D. 1792.] FEESH SCRUPLES OF LOUIS. 473 

was convinced that the dissolution of his force was meant to 
facilitate his murder (indeed, one memher had opposed the motion 
in the assembly with the argument that it could have no object 
but regicide) : and, believing his death to be at hand, was resolved 
that his last act should not be one which he had never ceased to 
look on as sacrilegious. He withdrew his promise to sanction the 
law ; and, instead, drew up with his own hand a letter to the 
assembly announcing his disapproval of the measure, and his 
fixed resolution never to consent to it. The letter was well argued 
and well expressed : but Dumouriez and his new colleagues knew 
well that the assembly was not a body with which either neat 
phrases or sound arguments would have any weight ; and, feeling 
that the determination thus announced by the king and from which 
no entreaties of them could induce him to depart, rendered their 
positions as ministers untenable, they resigned their offices ; not 
without sad forebodings of the fate to which they were leaving 
their master, to whom Dumouriez at least had become sincerely 
attached. On taking his leave, and preparing to join the army, 
he could not suppress his melancholy anticipations ; and, though 
no longer authorised to give him counsel as his minister, he once 
more implored him not to persist in refusing his sanction to a law 
which the assembly was resolved to pass. But, many and strik- 
ing as are the points of resemblance between the incidents of the 
French Revolution and the great English Rebellion, hardly one is 
more remarkable than that which is afforded by the stand made 
by Charles against the last resolution of the parliament against 
the bishops, and, by this resistance of Louis to the decree against 
the priests, and by the mischievous effect which in each case their 
determination had upon their fortunes, as affording a pretext to their 
enemies to represent them as hostile to the wishes and feelings of 
the nation at large. In spite of the general's entreaties, on this 
one subject Louis continued inflexible. He could not deny that 
his adviser was a man not easily dismayed, nor inclined unneces- 
sarily to submit to compulsion : but he looked on the act as one to 
be decided solely by his own conscience. ' God,' he told his de- 
parting minister, ' was his witness that he was thinking only of 
the happiness of France.' And Dumouriez did full justice to the 
honesty and disinterestedness of his patriotism : but warned him 
ia words which should ever be present to the mind of every states- 
man who would legislate for or rule a country, that he was respon- 
sible to God not only for the purity of his intentions, but for the 
enlightened exercise of his authority : and he predicted, as the 
result of the king's policy, far gi'eater evils to the very interest 
and class which it was intended to protect. He foretold the 
massacre of the priests themselves, the destruction of all religion, 



i74 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1792. 

fcli8 loss of tlie king's crown ; his voice failed him when he en- 
deavoured to describe the dangers which he foresaw for Louis 
himself and his family. Louis was moved by his evident 
sincerity : he fully shared his forebodings, but they could not 
change his resolution. He shed tears on parting with the general. 
* I expect death/ said he, * and have already pardoned my 
enemies. You are going to the army : and have my gratitude and 
esteem. May you be happier than I am ! ' 

Though for a few months the king's wishes for his faithful 
servant's success seemed in the way to be realised, the eventual 
fall of Dumouriez was not to be envied. He gained one decided 
and important victory : and hoped at first to make the reputation 
he had acquired instrumental to the preservation of, at least, the 
life of Louis : coming to Paris, and labouring for some days with 
great earnestness to induce the Girondin leaders who still looked 
on him as a member of their party to interpose on his behalf. 
When his efforts had proved fruitless, he formed plans, if not to 
avenge him, at least to save the queen, and to preserve the nation 
itself from the bloodthirsty tyranny which had caused such 
calamities and disgraces, and which was preparing more. But his 
defeatat Neerwinden, a field memorable in formerdays for one of the 
most brilliant achievements of Luxembourg, put an end to all such 
hopes. Failure, to whatever it might be owing, was never for- 
given by the monsters who were now masters of Paris. A price 
was set on his head. He was forced to fly ; and for above thirty 
years he lived an exile in foreign countries, first at Hamburg and 
afterwards in England, subsisting on a small pension allowed him 
by the German princes and by George IV. as regent and king. 
lie had deserved a better fate. He had not only shown himself a 
brave and skilful soldier, but a statesman of no moderate foresight 
and ability. As a patriot, he had been honestly desirous to save 
the king and his constitutional authority : he had been so from 
the fii'st; and had he not been repulsed by the combined im- 
becility and vanity of Necker, he, with his military capacity and 
influence over the soldiers, might probably have had the power to 
be more serviceable to the royal cause than Mirabeau could have 
been even if he lived. But when his services were at last ac- 
cepted, the time had passed that they could be useful ; and Necker 
is justly chargeable not only with the injury which he inflicted on 
his royal master by his own mismanagement, but with the equally 
fatal and far less pardonable mistake of rejecting the aid which 
might have remedied his own blunders. Napoleon had some 
reason to say, as he did say, that Kobespierre himself had not 
exerted a more ruinous influence on Louis and on France. 



A.D. 1792.] DANTON AND MAKAT. 475 



CHAPTER XXI. 
A.D. 1792—1793. 

NOTHING could now save Louis, unless, indeed, he could have 
escaped from Paris, vrhich might even yet have been possible 
could he have been prevailed upon to repeat the attempt. Even 
his consent to the decree against the priests could only have averted 
the blow by inducing Dumouriez to retain his civil office in pre- 
ference to his military command ; and the real danger to which the 
country was at one time exposed from the advance of the Prussians, 
would have made it difficult for an ambitious soldier to have re- 
fused to march against her enemies. But with his departure all 
hope of the king's safety certainly departed also. Those who had 
vowed his destruction were not to be deterred from any purpose of 
blood ; and they were resolved to give him neither time nor re- 
spite. A new club had lately been formed, as a sort of offshoot 
from the Jacobins ; taking the name of the Cordeliers, from hold- 
ing its meetings in a Franciscan convent. It had been founded by 
a butcher, named Legendre ; but its guiding spirits were Danton 
and Marat : Danton, as has been already mentioned, was a lawyer, 
who, never having had any practice in his profession, and being 
deeply in debt at the beginning of the Revolution, had made him- 
self known from the first by the violence of his counsels, which 
he recommended by a ready eloquence. He had natural advan- 
tages of no small importance for a demagogue : a commanding 
figm-e, gi-eat personal strength and a stentorian voice ; and in the 
unnatural frenzy which, during the early years of the Eevolution 
animated the Parisians, the ferocity with which he seemed to 
desire bloodshed for his own sake did not disgust so many as it 
fascinated. Marat had been bred an apothecary ; having studied 
medicine at Edinburgh, whei-e he acquired such a knowledge of 
our language that he even wrote a pamphlet in it. He was as 
unsuccessful in getting employment in his trade as Danton was in 
his profession ; and, giving up any higher practice, had been glad 
to be employed as veterinary surgeon in the stables of the king's 
brother, the Count d'Artois. He, too, from the first, saw in the 
Kevolution a means of rising to power. He had not Danton's 



i76 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1732. 

personal or oratorical gifts. His figure was puny ; his voice thin 
and squeaking ; but he was a fluent writer, and in the summer of 
1789, set up a journal called the ' Friend of the People,' in which 
he went beyond even the most sanguinary of his contemporaries 
in his cries for bloodshed ; not always sparing the assembly itself, 
but on one occasion declaring that it would never be well with 
France tiU 800 deputies were hung on 800 trees in the gardens of 
the Tuileries. On such vile wretches did the fate of France and 
her monarch now depend. 

It was a bad omen for Louis that these men also were closely 
connected with Madame Roland. They had both been especially 
conspicuous in demanding the slaughter of both king and queen, 
when they were brought from Yarennes ; and she, who seems to 
have had a strange power of rousing all the worst passions of those 
with whom she came in contact, felt that she could rely on them 
both to contrive and to execute any deed of horror. In the course 
of time more than one attempt to assassinate both king and queen 
was discovered. But their enemies were not inclined to content 
themselves with isolated attempts ,at crime. They decided on 
organising a riot on a large scale, in which they doubted not their 
agents would find means of accomplishing their purpose. And, as 
in the case of the attack on Versailles three years before, notice 
was ostentatiously given, not only of the intended outbreak, but 
of the very day on which it was to take place. Madame de Stael 
has said that there can never be a conspiracy, properly so called, 
in Paris ; and that, if there could be, it would be superfluous, since 
every one at all times follows the majority, and no one ever keeps 
a secret. And thus Louis was as well aware as any one, that, on tlie 
twentieth of June, an attack was to be made on the Tuileries with 
the object of murdering him. He*prepared for the danger in his 
own way ; not making a single endeavour to collect a force to 
defend himself, but sending for his confessor to afford him the last 
consolations of religion, as one whose doom was fixed. ' He had 
done,' he wrote to him on the nineteenth, ' with this world, and his 
thoughts were now fixed on heaven alone. Great calamities were 
announced for the morrow, but he felt that he had courage to 
meet them.' And, after the holy man had left him, he once more 
gave utterance to his forebodings, and gazing on the setting sun, 
said to his attendants, ' Who can tell whether it is not the last 
sunset that I shall see ? ' not indeed that his fears were for himself, 
but for his wife and for his children, whose fate he could not but 
feel to depend on his own. 

The conspirators were equally busy, but in a different way. 
Gangs of ruifians were brought to the last meeting of the leaders 
to receive instructions ; the agents of d'Orleans were there, lavishly 



i.D. 1792.] A FRESH EIOT IS ORGANISED. 477 

distributing gold among them, in the hopes that the slaughter of 
the liing might be followed by the enthronement of their master : 
their posts and objects of attack were allotted to each gang; the 
watchword was given out. 'Destruction to the palace.' None 
doubted of complete success ; and, indeed, the force that was pro- 
vided might well have justified the most confident anticipations. 

One of the strangest features of the outbreak was, that its 
contrivers should have thought it desirable to give it the pretext 
of a legitimate purpose. It was announced that the people would 
march in procession to present to the king and the assembly 
petitions on the subject of the dismissal of the Girondin ministry, 
and on the refusal of Louis to give his royal assent to the decree 
against the priests. But no attempt was made to give the pro- 
cession itself a peaceful appearance. Early on the morning of the 
twentieth, 20,000 men, all furnished with weapons of some kind, 
and accompanied by crowds of the lowest class of women, started 
from the place where the Bastille had formerly stood, and marched 
in divisions on the palace, uttering the most ferocious cries and 
threats, and bearing aloft banners and emblems expressive of the 
most sanguinary purpose ; one of the most common inscriptions 
being, ' Death to Veto and his wife,' as they called the king and 
queen, from the limited power of refusing his consent to the acts 
of the assembly, with which, after long debatej he had been in- 
vested. A company of butchers carried a calf s head on the poiut 
of a pike, with a label declaring it * the head of an aristocrat.' A 
band of crossing-sweepers, or of men disguised as such, though the 
fineness of their linen was remarked as inconsistent with the rags 
which were their outward garments, bore as their standard a pair 
of ragged breeches, with the inscription, ' Tremble tyrants, hei'e 
are the Sansculottes ! ' a title which the revolutionists of the streets 
were beginning to adopt. One gang of ruffians carried a model of 
a guillotine ; another had a miniature gallows, with an effigy of 
the queen herself hanging to it. So great was the crowd, that it 
was near three o'clock in the afternoon when it reached the 
assembly ; where, in spite of the protests of the law officers against 
any countenance being given to an armed mob, whose avowed 
object of forcing its way to the king was in itself illegal, Ver- 
gniaud and his party advocated their admission into the chamber ; 
to which, indeed, the rioters themselves were quite able to force 
an entrance. They were allowed to read what they called their 
. petition, which was, in fact, only a denunciation of the king as ' an 
enemy of the people,' and a demand for his blood, as ' the life of 
a king was of no more account than that of any private citizen.' 
The Girondin leaders were observed to smile at the most san- 
P'uinary expressions; and carried a resolution that the petitioners 



478 MODERN HISTORY. [a.u. 1792. 

stould be allowed to enter with tlieir arms, and defile before tbem. 
Elated by this sanction, they poured in with even greater uproar 
than they had raised in the streets ; mingling obscene songs with 
cries of ' Vive la Nation ! ' and ' Mort aux Tyrans ! ' brandishing 
their weapons with gestures indicative of their eagerness for murder; 
and pointing triumphantly to the guillotine and the gallows with 
the queen's effigy. Such were the sights and sounds which were 
thought by its chiefs to be most in character with the legislative 
assembly of the people which boasted to be the pattern of civi- 
lisation for the rest of Europe. 

So great was the crowd that evening approached before the 
last of the rabble had passed through the hall, and by that 
time the leading ranks were in front of the Tuileries, There 
were but scanty means of resisting them. The national guard 
were the recognised protectors of the palace ; but the agents 
of d'Orl^ans and the Girondins had tampered with many of them 
so successfully that , as a force, but little trust could be placed in 
them; and the champions on whom alone the sovereigns could 
rely for their defence were a band of gentlemen, beaded by the 
veteran Marshal de Noailles, who had repaired to the Tuileries 
at daybreak to afford their king such protection as might be found 
in their devoted fidelity and fearless gallantry. Some, besides the 
old marshal, such as M. d'Hervilly, who had commanded the 
cavalry of the constitutional guard, and Acloque, a loyal officer 
of the national guard, brought mUitarj' experience to aid their 
valour, and made such arrangements as, in the brief time that was 
allowed them, seemed practicable to keep the rioters at bay. But 
the utmost valour of such a handful of men, as at most they were, 
and even the more solid resistance of iron gates and barriers, were 
unavailing against the thousands that assailed them. They began 
to batter down the railings with sledge hammers. Two of the 
municipal magistrates ordered the sentinels to open the gates to 
the sovereign people. The sentinels fled ; the gates were opened 
or beaten in ; the palace was open ; the mob seized one of the 
cannons in the courtyard, carried it up the stairs of the palace, 
planted it against the outer door of the royal apartments, and, 
while they shouted out a demand that the king should show him- 
self, began to batter the door as they had battered the gates 
below, and threatened, if it did not yield to their hatchets, to blow 
it in with cannon shot. 

The princes had reason to think the king's forebodings realised, . 
and that their last hour was come ; but even in that awful moment 
no sign of fear was visible in their conduct : the most hardened 
warrior never confronted danger and death with more sublime 
intrepidity. Marie Antoinette was always fearless : it was her 



A.B. 1792.] THE MOB ENTERS THE TUILERIES. 479 

inheritance from her heroic mother. And Louis, weak and irreso- 
lute when called on to act, when he had only to suffer and endure 
was as calm and magnanimous as she herself. Even the king's 
sister, the meek and pious Princess Elizabeth, was nerved to a 
resolution which seemed foreign to her character by the danger of 
her brother and his family, and rivalled the queen herself in the 
dauntlessness of her unselfish heroism. The hatchets beat down 
the outer door ; and, as it fell, the king came forth from the room 
behind, and, with unruffled countenance, accosted the ruffians who 
were pouring through it. The princess was by his side. He had 
charged those around him to keep the queen back ; and she, 
knowing how special an object of the popular hatred and fury she 
was, with a fortitude beyond that which defies death, kept out of 
sight lest she should add to his danger. For a moment the mob, 
awed, in spite of themselves, by the dignity of their intended 
victims, halted in their onset ; but their delay was but for a 
moment, the front ranks were pushed on by those behind, and, 
with shouts of ' Down with Veto,' ' Death to the Austrian,' aimed 
their pikes at the princess. A shout of ' Spare the princess,' 
arose from some of the guard ; but to those, to whose outcry she 
believed she owed her life, she turned almost reproachfully: 
* Why,' said she, ' did you undeceive them, it might have saved 
the queen ? ' Meantime d'Hervilly, Acloque, and a few trusty 
grenadiers, had forced their way up a backstairs, and, dragging 
the king into a recess formed by a window, raised a rampart of 
benches in front of him, and drew up in front of it to repel any 
further attack. They would gladly have charged their assailants ; 
but Louis himself forbade them : * Put up your sword,' he said to 
d'Hervilly ; ' the crowd is excited rather than wicked ; ' and he 
addressed the rioters with words of dignified conciliation, owing 
his safety, in all probability, as much to his own calmness as to 
the fidelity and valour of his adherents. One ruffian threatened 
him with instant death if he did not at once grant every demand 
contained in their petition. He replied, as composedly as if he 
had been on his throne at Versailles, that the present was not the 
time for making such a demand, nor was that the way to make it. 
Legendre, the Cordelier butcher, whose fury was heightened by 
drunkenness, raised his pike with menacing gestures, as he re- 
proached him with being a traitor and enemy to his country. ' I 
am not, and never have been aught but the sincere friend of my 
people,' was the gentle but fearless answer. ' If it be so, put on 
this red cap ; ' and the ruffian thrust into his hand a red night-cap 
which he and his fellows had adopted as the badge of liberty and 
equality; prepared, if he hesitated to accept it, to plunge his 
weapon into his breast. The king put it on, regarding it so little 



480 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1792. 

that he forgot to remove it, as he would have wished to do, and 
as he repented afterwards that he had not done, thinking that his 
conduct in suffering it to remain on his head hore too strong a re- 
semblance to fear or to an unworthy compromise of his dignity. 

All this time the shouts for the queen's appearance were furious 
and increasing ; till at last the faithful friends who had hitherto 
prevailed on her to remain out of sight admitted that hsr appear- 
ance might he less dangerous than her continued absence. The 
inner door was thrown open, and leading by the hand her children, 
from whom she refused to part, and, attended by her ladies, the 
most timid of whom seemed inspired by her courage, she took her 
place by her husband's side, and with head erect and colour 
heightened by the sight of her enemies, faced them disdainfully. 
And the result showed that she had judged wisely as well as 
bravely in coming forward. Before 

Her lion port, her awe-commanding face,i 

Even those monsters who were lately clamouring for her blood 
quailed ; and one of the fiercest of the band, Santerre, a brewer, 
already infamous by many a deed of blood, addressed her with 
what he meant to be courtesy, but what, was strange encourage- 
ment to his queen : ' Princess,' he said, ' do not fear, the Fi-ench. 
people do not wish to slay you ; I promise you this in their name.' 
Marie Antoinette had long before declared that her heart had 
become French; it was too much for her to allow such a ruffian his 
claim to be considered the spokesman of the nation. * It is not 
by such as you,' she replied, 'that I judge of the French people, 
but by brave men like these/ and she pointed to the gentlemen, 
who, with de Noailles, had come to her defence, and to the faithful 
grenadiers. The well-timed compliment raised them to greater 
enthusiasm ; but already the danger was passing away. 

The majority of the assembly had seen with indifference the 
mob depart to attack the Tuileries ; but, when the uproar grew 
so violent as to be heard even in the hall,^ where they were 
debating, a small body of members, the relics of the constitu- 
tional party, headed by Count Matthieu Dumas, crossed over to 
the palace to see what was taking place ; and, returning, reported 
the danger in which the king and queen were placed. Dumas 
insisted that the assembly was bound at once to take measures to 

1 Gray, Bard, iii. 2, who quotes tartnesse of her princelie checkes.' 

Speed's relation of an audience given * The haU of the assembly ran at 

by Queen Elizabeth to the Polish right angles to the Tuileries, of 

ambassador: 'And thus she, lionlike, which it almost touched the comer 

rising, daunted the malapert orator furthest from the tower, and looked 

no less with her state!}' port and into the gardens of the palace, 
majestical deporture, than with the 



A..D. 1792.] PLANS FOR THE KING'S ESCAPE. 481 

ensure their safety ; and, though the Jacobin members tried to 
browbeat, and even to threaten him, he, a soldier of proved valour, 
was not to be intimidated; and, at last, shamed his colleagues 
into commissioning a deputation of twenty-four members to repair 
to the palace and protect the king. Petion, too, who had succeeded 
Bailly as mayor, and who had kept carefully aloof while th^re was 
a chance of the king being murdered, now that he could no longer 
hope for such a consummation came down and exerted himself 
to induce the rioters to withdraw ; and thanking them ' for the 
moderation and dignity with which they had exercised the right 
of petition,' bade them ' finish the day in similar conformity to 
the law,' and retire to their homes. They obeyed sulkily, and 
withdrew ; Santerre, whose gentler mood had passed away, mutter- 
ing with deep oaths that they had missed their blow, but that they 
would soon repeat it. 

And before long it was known to all Paris that an insurrection 
on a far larger scale was preparing ; the chief conspirators being 
so confident in their power that Vergniaud and some others of the 
Girondin leaders had the insolence to write the king a formal 
letter threatening him with a fresh attack on the tenth of August, and 
warning him that his deposition was the most merciful consequence 
that he could anticipate, if he hesitated at once to replace Roland 
and his former colleagues in the ministry. While it was known 
that the Girondins were not prepared to content themselves on this 
occasion with the fury of the Parisian mob, but that a man named 
Barbaroux, one of their party, and a personal friend of Madame 
Roland, had promised to bring up from Marseilles and the adjacent 
districts a band of ruffians whom he described as capable of any 
atrocity. And so hopeless did all prospect of active resistance 
to such an attack appear, and so clear was it that flight was the 
king's only resource, that his former minister, Bertrand de Mole- 
ville, with the aid of M. d'Hervilly and others of his faithful 
friends, arranged, with gi'eat skill, a project for his escape to the 
castle of Gaillon, in Normandy, which, though at no great distance 
from the capital, was pronounced by officers of experience to be 
thoroughly defensible ; and implored him at once to place him- 
self and his family in safety. Similar advice came even from La- 
fayette ; even he, wanton and shameful as was the delight which, 
from the first, he had taken ia insulting and degrading his sove- 
reigns, could not reflect without horror on the deadly peril with 
which he now saw them threatened, and proposed to bring up a 
picked battalion from the army on the frontier to Paris, under whose 
escort Louis might repair to Compiegne, while the knowledge of 
his safety would enable his partisans in Paris to assume a bolder 
tone, and to take steps to re-establish his authority. But Louis 
22 



482 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1792. 

rejected both proposals. The queen distrusted Lafayette's sin- 
cerity : he himself, though less suspicious of his present loyalty,* 
distrusted his ability. And, though the decision was less promptly 
taken, the retreat to Chateau Gaillon also was at last decided 
against, or at least postponed ' till the last extremity.' 

As it was on the sixth of August when this determination was 
announced to Bertrand, and the insurrection was to take place on 
the tenth, he thought the last extremity had already arrived ; but 
he afterwards learnt that Louis v/as trusting for safety to the 
infamy of his enemies. He had formerly, as we have seen, refused 
to buy Vergniaud and the other Girondin leaders at the price they 
had put upon their services ; but he had now consented to buy 
Danton, Petion, and Santerre at theirs, and for a million of francs, 
which had been paid to them, they had undertaken to stop the 
insurrection. There can be little doubt that Bertrand was right 
when he believed that their object had merely been to lull Louis 
into a false sense of security, to secure his destruction by cheating 
him of his money. But nothing in the whole history of the Revo- 
lution is stranger than that Louis should have trusted Potion, 
who a day or two before had presented to the assembly a formal 
petition from the sections of the capital for his deposition, 
and for the convocation of a national convention to establish 
a new form of government ; and who, it was plain, was far more 
deeply pledged to the Jacobins and the populace, both by his 
sentiments and his fears, than he could possibly be bound to the 
king by any bribe whatever. But of that blindness which is pro- 
verbially said to be the forerunner of destruction to those who are 
doomed, as it is also in a great degree the cause of it, the king and 
even the queen, with all her superior capacity, had a full share, 
though more allowance than usual must be made for their occa- 
sional errors of judgment, in consideration of the unparalleled 
difficulties and dangers with which, throughout, they were sur- 
rounded. 

But no misplaced confidence or indecision blunted the vigour of 
their enemies ; though, as the day approached, they found that 
their forces would be less numerous than they had expected. 
The allies who were promised them from the provinces, and 
were to be counted b}"- thousands, did not exceed a few hundreds. 

1 If Lamartine may be lielieved, king-,' he was writinfj; letters to his 

the Queen's distrust was better foun- own confidants in which he declared 

ded than her husband's confidence, himself prepared to take up arms 

I.amartine affirms that his ambition against him, if he should attenspt to 

was to establish for himself ' a pro tec- play the sovereign, trancher du Sou- 

torate under Louis XVI.' And that, verain. — History of the Girondina, 

at the very moment when he seemed xvii. 7. English Translation, 
devoted to the preservation of the 



A.D. 1792.] A FEESH ATTACK ON THE TUILEEIES. 483 

It was plain they would again have to ti'ust mainly to the mob of 
the capital. And in one or two petty tumults the national guards 
had lately shown an inclination to resist the populace rather than 
to unite with it ; but d'Orleans still trusted to the effect of his 
bribes on the soldiers, and Danton to the maxim which, betray- 
ing Louis while taking his money, he was vociferous and un- 
wearied in impressing on all around him : ' Audacity j once more 
Audacity ; always Audacity ! ' 

The ostentatious notice which had been given of the intended 
insurrection had, however, instead of terrifying Louis and his 
advisers, given them warning, by which they had profited to 
make arrangements to resist the attack ; and, at first sight, it 
might have seemed that the contest in which they were about to 
engage was not a hopeless one. Mandat, the commander of the 
national guard for the city, was a soldier of experience and ardent 
loyalty ; besides a division of 2,400 men under his orders, the 
Swiss guards were nearly 1,000 more ; and they had eleven guns. 
But when the critical moment came some of these resources 
proved utterly unsound, and the rest were neutralised by the fatal 
weakness of Louis himself. The leaders of the insurrection pos- 
sessed themselves of all the churches, and at midnight, on the ninth, 
the fatal tocsin was heard to peal from every tower and steeple. 
A new municipal council, elected by a majority of the sections of 
the city, which had already declared themselves in insurrection, 
had already supplied those who were to take an active part in the 
riot with arms and ammunition, and at six in the morning 20,000 
men once mere marched on the Tuileries. It was but little later 
when Louis, accompanied by the queen, his sister, and the little Dau- 
phin, went down into the courts of the palace to review the troops 
who were collected for his defence. But Mandat was not there ; 
he had been sent for by the new municipal council, under the 
pretence of his advice being needed to enable them to concert 
measures for the king's safety. His own judgment, which bade 
him to refuse obedience to the summons, had been overruled by 
the urgency of others ; and, after being examined and insulted by 
the councillors, he had been murdered by a band of assassins at 
their disposal. His authority might, perhaps, have kept his 
soldiers steady to their duty ; but the news of his fate, which was 
not slow to reach them, encouraged the disaffected, while it dis- 
heartened the loyal. When the king appeared, many of the com- 
panies greeted him with seditious shouts; and the artillerymen 
were open, loud, and even violent in their treason ; quitting 
their ranks to offer the king personal insults, doubling their fista 
in his face, and assailing him with the coarsest threats that the 
Revolution had yet taught tliem. The Swiss guards alone were 



484 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1792. 

true to their duty ; they hailed Louis with enthusiastic cheers, 
which for a moment drowned the disloyal clamour of their un- 
worthy comrades : but both insults and cheers the hapless king 
received with equal apathy. The despair which was in his heart 
was shown even in his dress, which had no military character or 
decoration, but was a suit of plain violet, such as was only worn 
by kings of France on occasions of mourning. It was to no pur- 
pose that the queen put arms in his hands, and exhorted him to 
take the command of the soldiers himself, and to show himself 
ready to fight in person for his throne. Once or twice he pro- 
nounced a few words of acknowledgment to his adherents, and 
gently expostulated with his threateners ; and then, pale and ex- 
hausted with the effort, returned to his apartments. 

The queen was almost in despair ; she saw that, from his want 
of enei'gy, the review had done harm rather than good. All that 
she could do was to show herself not wanting to the occasion, nor 
to him. Her courage rose with the imminence of the danger. 
Those who beheld her, as, with dilating eyes and heightened 
colour, she listened to the increasing tumult, and, repressing every 
appearance of terror, strove with unabated energy to animate her 
husband, and to fortify the good disposition of the troops that 
remained faithful, have described in terms of enthusiastic admira- 
tion the majestic dignity of her demeanour in this trying hour. 
And her difficulties were increased by the disunion which sprang 
up even among her defenders themselves. As at the riot of June, 
a body of nobles and gentlemen, many of whom had belonged 
to the old constitutional guard, had hastened to the palace to 
place their swords at the service of their sovereign. But the 
national guards were jealous of them. They disdained to be 
seen with men who wore no uniform, and who, as they were 
mostly in court dress, they distrusted as aristocrats. They be- 
sought the queen to dismiss them. ' Never,' said she ; ' and, 
trusting that the example of true self-devotion might stimulate 
the honest rivalry in those who complained, and full of that royal 
magnanimity which feels that it does honour to those whom it 
trusts, and that it has a right to look for the loyalty of its 
servants even in death,' she added, ' they will serve with you and 
share your dangers ; they will fight with you in the van, in the 
rear, as you will ; they will show you how men can die for their 
king.' 

Meanwhile, the insurgents marched on ; so rapidly that it was 
little more than eight o'clock when they reached the palace ; but 
it was already deserted by those who were the objects of the 
attack. The disaffection shown by some of the troops at the 
review had been contagious. Some of the former board of muni- 



A.D. 1792.] LOUIS TAKES EEFUGE IN THE ASSEMBLY. 485 

cipal magistrates, who had been superseded by the new council, 
and bore it no goodwill, had tried in vain to bring back the 
national guards to their duty; but one battalion only, that of the 
Filles de St.-Thomas, could be depended on, while the artillery- 
men drew the charges from their guns and extinguished the 
matches. Accompanied by M. Roederer, the legal adviser of the 
department of the Seine, whose advice had already cost Mandat 
his life, though there is no reason to think that it had been trea- 
cherously given, they returned to the palace to represent to the 
king the utter hopelessness of making any resistance, and that his 
sole resource was to seek the protection of the assembly. The 
queen, who, to use her own words, would have preferred being 
nailed to the walls of the palace rather than seek a refuge which 
she deemed degrading, still pointed to the troops, and showed by 
her gestures that she looked on them as the only protectors whom 
it became them to trust. But Louis, always eager for any course 
which seemed calculated to avoid a conflict, decided on taking the 
advice thus pressed on him. 

Yet even at the last moment, could he have summoned up 
active courage, there was still hope. M. Boscari, the commander 
of the one faithful battalion of the national guard, implored him 
to change his mind. With his own men, united to the Swiss 
guard, he undertook to cut a way for the king to the Rouen 
road. The insurgents, he' said, were on the other side of the 
city ; and nothing could resist him. But still, as on former occa- 
sions, Louis rejected advice which contemplated the possibility of 
bloodshed; he pleaded the risk to which he should expose those 
dear to him, and led them to almost certain death in commit- 
ting their safety to the assembly. A guard of honour was hastily 
formed of one company of the Swiss, and one of the national 
guard ; and thus escorted, the whole family quitted the palace, 
which but one of them, the princess royal, a little girl of fourteen, 
was destined ever to see again. 

The news of his departure from the palace caused some division 
in the assembly ; where the Jacobins hoped to make it lead to his 
instant assassination, while the Girondins were not yet prepared 
for his murder, but were disposed to be contented with his de- 
thronement. And, as they had the majority, they were able to 
carry a resolution that a deputation should be sent to meet him. 
Yet, had it not been for the military escort, the Jacobins would 
have attained their object, for a mob of the lowest ruffians 
thronged the gardens through which the royal family had to pass, 
and surrounded the doors of the hall of assembly ; and, as the 
sovereigns passed on, assailed them with savage clamours for their 
blood, and especially for that of the queen and her ladies; and 



486 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1702. 

were only kept back hj the resolute fi-ont maintained by the 
soldiers from gratifying their hatred with their own hands. On 
his entrance into the hall, Louis bore himself with sufficient dig- 
nity. ' I am come here,' was his address, ' to prevent a great 
crime ; I think I cannot be better or more safely placed, gentle- 
men, than among you.' And his composure for the moment awed 
even Vergniaud, who happened to be president, into decency of 
demeanour, so that he assured him, in a brief reply, in which he 
did not refuse to give him the title of Sire, that he might rely on 
the firmness of the assembly to support all constituted authorities. 
Meanwhile, the tumult out of doors was frightful : the insur- 
gents were divided into two bodies ,• one sacking the Tuileries, 
now deserted by all, save a few of the royal servants who were 
ruthlessly murdered ; the monsters who slaughtered them not 
being content with their deaths, but, tearing their lifeless bodies 
to pieces, with cannibal fury devouring the still bleeding frag- 
ments, or hoisting the severed limbs on pikes to carry in triumph 
through the streets : while the other party tried to force its way 
into the assembly hall, but was kept at bay by the faithful Swiss 
guards, whose successful valour showed that there might still 
have been a hope of escape for Louis, could he have roused him- 
self to courageous action. A pistol-shot was fired in the crowd, 
probably by accident, as no one was hit ; but the Swiss, taking it 
for the signal or commencement of a more regular attack upon 
themselves, thought the time was come to defend their own lives. 
They levelled their muskets and fired ; charged down the steps, 
driving the insurgents before them like sheep ; forced their way 
into the Carrousel ; recovered the cannon which were posted 
in that court ; and were so completely victorious that it seemed 
possible even now that, united with the other battalion which 
had remained behind when they escorted the king across the gar- 
dens, they might still be able to quell the insurrection. But 
their success led only to their own destruction. The deputies 
were panic-stricken at the noise of the firing, and extorted from 
Louis an order to the Swiss to retire to their barracks. It was 
not easy to convey it to them, so dense was the crowd around 
both hall and palace; but M. d'Hervilly undertook the task, 
hoping, if he could reach the guard, to place himself at their head, 
and still to extricate the king from his perils. He succeeded in 
reaching them, and, suppressing the order with which he had 
been charged, summoned the whole body instead to follow him to 
the rescue of the king and his family. They obeyed with joy : he 
took the command ; and, sending one division to secure a draw- 
bridge at the bottom of the garden, led the other towards the 
hall. He reached it ; and, while he himself staid below to direct 



A.n. 1792.J MASSACEE OF THE SWISS GUARDS. 487 

the operations of his men against the insurgents, who were keep- 
ing up an irregular fire upon them from the cover of the trees, 
sent up a small detachment into the chamber of the assembly, 
where Louis still was, to explain to him the posture of affairs, 
and to ask for orders. It was a strange order that he received. 
Even the scenes of the morning, the deliberate attack upon Ms 
palace, the hostile feelings of the assembly which had been made 
painfully evident to him during the few hours that he had taken 
refuge there, had failed to eradicate the king's unwillingness to 
authorise his guards to fight in his behalf, or to convince him that 
when at least his throne, and probably his life and that of all his 
family were at stake, it was nobler to struggle for victory, and 
if defeated, to 

Die with, harness ou his back, 

and arms in his hands, than tamely to sit still and be stripped of 
his kingly dignity by brigands and traitors. His command to the 
officer, the last he ever issued, was that the whole battalion should 
lay down its arms. He would not, he said, that brave men should 
die.^ They knew that, in fact, he was consigning them to death, 
and to death without honour ; but, obedient to the last, they laid 
down their arms. They were instantly moved off as prisoners, to 
a church in the rear of the hall of assembly ; and there, with the 
exception of a few to whom friends brought plain clothes to ex- 
change for their uniforms and who escaped in this disguise, the 
whole body were presently massacred in cold blood. 

The other battalion which had been ordered to secure the draw- 
bridge were only so far more fortunate that they perished by a 
more soldier-like dccith. As their road lay through a more open 
part of the garden, the smallness of their numbers encouraged the 
insurgents to press upon their rear, and many were sabred and shot 
down. Still they steadily made their way, and would have suc- 
ceeded in making themselves masters of the bridge, which, if the 
king could have been prevailed upon to act vigorously, would have 
been of the last importance, had not a battalion of national 
guards, whose station was in front of the bridge, caught the con- 
tagion of rebellion, joined the insurgents, and fired on them. The 
mounted gendarmerie followed their example. Even when thus 
surrounded on all sides by enemies, these heroic guards showed 
what they could have done, had they been properly supported 
and commanded. They charged through the national guard, 
seized and crossed the bridge, and, reaching the Place Louis XV. 

1 'Deposez les [armes] eutre les vous p^rissent.' — Hist, de la Terreur 
mains de la garde nationale. Je ne viii. 5. 
veux pas que de braves gens comme 



188 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1792. 

formed in square, resolved to sell their lives dearly. It was all 
that was left to them to do. Hemmed ia on all sides, they fell 
one after another ; Louis, who had refused to let them die for 
him, having only given their death the additional pang of feeling 
that it had been of no service to him. The few who escaped 
gradual!}' found their way to their native land, where they were 
received with enthusiastic admiratio.i by their countrymen, who 
felt that their unshaken fidelity to their duty reflected honour on 
the whole nation. Among that simple people rewards are mea- 
sured not by their costliness, but by the sentiment which has 
caused them to be bestowed, and by the character of the acts 
which have earned them ; and with such rewards the diet of their 
country now honoured those who had survived the slaughter of 
their comrades. To each was given an iron medal, with the well- 
merited inscription, descriptive of the character of the wearers, 
' Fidelity and Honour ;' and to those who had fallen in the contest a 
monument was erected at Lucerne : the effigy is a wounded lion : 
the inscription testifies that it commemorates the ' ill-treated yet 
invincible soldier.' ^ 

Meanwhile the condition of Louis and his family was hardly 
less miserable than that of those who were perishing in this hope- 
less struggle. On their arrival in the hall of assembly, they had 
been assigned a small box behind the president's chair, which was 
usually appropriated to the reporters of the debates. And there 
they were condemned to hear deputy after deputy pouring forth 
the coarsest denunciations of their personal chai'acters and the 
foulest threats; the thanks of the assembly given to the insur- 
gents as ' virtuous citizens, who had proved themselves eager for 
the restoration of peace and order ;' the whole being crowned by 
a set of resolutions, moved hj Vergniaud himself, and carried by 
acclamation, suspending the king from all exercise of authority; 
ordering his confinement in the Luxembourg Palace, for which 
the Temple was afterwards substituted as a stronger and more 
secure prison : directing the impeachment of his ministers ; and 
the immediate summoning of a new assembly ; and re-appointing 
Roland and his former colleagues to their old offices, with the 
addition of the bloodthirsty Danton as minister of justice. 

It was not till daybreak on the eleventh that the assembly 
adjourned ; when the royal family were removed for the night to 
an adjacent convent, where four wretched cells had been hastily 
furnished with campbeds and a few other necessaries of the 
coarsest description. From thence they were removed to the 
Luxembourg Palace, and from that to the Temple, avowedly on 
the ground that it would be less easy to escape from it. The 
' Laeso sed invicto militL 



A.D. 1792.] THE KING IS CONFINED IN THE TEilPLE. 489 

Temple was an old fortress built, as its name indicated, by the 
Knights Templars, and surrounded on all sides by a lofty wall. It 
contained handsome apartments, having, indeed, till recently 
been occupied by the Count d'Artois as his Parisian residence. 
But the part of it now allotted to Louis and his queen was a small 
dilapidated tower, which had been occasionally used by the 
count's footmen; and which contained so small a number of 
rooms that the Princess Elizabeth's bed was made in the kitchen. 
Their attendants, with the exception of one or two menial ser- 
vants, were dismissed ; and there was evidently no desii-e to 
disguise the fact that the whole family were prisoners. They 
were even denied the use of pen and ink, lest they should com- 
municate with those of their adherents who were still at liberty ; 
and some of the queen's ladies also were thrown into the common 
prisons of the city without any offence being alleged against them 
but that they had formed part of the royal household. 

The last extremity, of which the queen had spoken a few days 
before, had indeed come, and come quickly. The royal family 
had only been in the Temple four days when Robespierre 
presented a petition to the assembly to demand ' a sacrifice of 
expiation to the heroes who had fallen gloriously in obtaining the 
tenth of August for France;' to complain that 'that immortal 
day was still barren of its full fruits while the tyrant was only 
suspended, not deposed and punished ; ' and to demand ' the trial 
of him and his execrable accomplices, who were stiU conspiring 
against the people ; ' while a formal deputation from the new 
municipal council made the same demand, and threatened a new 
insurrection if it were not instantly complied with. 

But, though the deaths of the king and queen were already de- 
termined, the Jacobin leaders were not yet quite ready to carry out 
their design. They had other enemies to strike down first. The 
Parisians indeed were terrified into acquiescence in what had been 
done, but in the provinces, and in many of the most important pro- 
vincial cities, the intelligence of the last outrages had been received 
with horror, which the magistrates of different departments did not 
scruple to proclaim. Even Lafayette was shocked at the entire 
extinction of the monarchy, and once more conceived the idea of 
trying to re-establish it by force ; but, being as incapable as he 
was disloyal, he took his measures so ill that he was compelled to fly 
across the frontier to save his own life ; having only exasperated 
the Jacobin party, and stimulated them to greater atrocities than 
had yet been perpetrated in order to strike terror into the royalists, 
under which name they included everyone who was supposed to feel 
the slightest sympathy vdth the hapless prisoners of the Temple. 
But, as I purpose to speak here only of transactions which directly 



190 MODERN HISTORY. [A.n. 1792. 

affected the fate of Louis himself, we may be spared the horrible 
recital of the September massacres; when, under the arrangements 
made by the new minister of justice, bands of assassins were let 
loose for four days, deluging the streets with blood, massacreing 
all the prisoners who, for any cause whatever, were detained in 
any prison in the whole city, often varying simple murder by 
every refinement of torture which the most fiendish cruelty could 
desire, till the number of the slain defied calculation, and only 
ceasing from their bloody work when they could no longer find 
anyone to slaughter. 

A fortnight afterwards the Convention, as the new assembly 
was called, met ,• and, as the result of the elections had been to 
get rid of the small number of royalists and constitutionalists 
who had had seats in the second assembly, and to secure the 
return of Robespierre and other Jacobin members of the first, 
whom their self-denying ordinance did not again prevent from 
offering themselves as candidates, the end was clearly at hand. 
Yet even now it might have been averted had not the Girondins 
been cowardly at heart and incapable in action, for the first object 
of Vergniaud and his party was not the murder of the king and 
queen, but the establishment of a republic ; they would not have 
refused to spare their lives could they have seen the way to main- 
tain themselves in their contest with the Jacobins without 
committing or co-operating in such an atrocity, and they were 
soon seen to have a decided majority in the assembly, and even in 
the city, where a candidate from their party was preferred for the 
mayoralty over a member of the Jacobin club. One of their 
body, Louvet, a man previously little known except as the author 
of a novel so licentious as even in such times to have earned a 
conspicuous infamy, but bound by ties of the closest intimacy 
with Madame lloland, even ventured to bring a formal accusation 
against Robespierre himself of aiming at the supreme power. 
But the Girondins were only able in debate, and only bold with 
their tongues. The Jacobins, all united in the defence of their 
leader, easily eluded an investigation of the charges thus preferred 
against him, and by their recriminations and audacity silenced 
their adversaries, and presently terrified them' into submitting to 
co-operate with them in their worst designs. They were aided 
by their discovery of some papers belonging to the king, and con- 
cealed in an iron safe in the Tuileries, the greater part of which 
were.of no importance ; but one of which seemed to prove that 
the leaders of the Girondins had been in communication with the 
king, (as indeed we have seen that they had been when they pro- 
posed to sell him their services). And, to save themselves from 
the danger in which such a discovery might involve them, they 



A.D. 1792.] DEMANDS FOR TRIAL OP THE KING. 491 

now no longer scrupled to sacrifice the king. They recognised the 
truth of the maxim proclaimed by Danton, that * the only law was 
to triumph,' and thenceforth rivalled the Jacobins themselves in 
their zeal for bringing Louis to trial, and in the fervour with which 
they avowed their resolution that the only end of his trial should 
be his condemnation. 

At one of the earliest meetings of the convention a committee 
had been appointed to investigate the king's conduct ; another 
committee had had the same duty entrusted to it by the municipal 
council, and in the beginning of November both presented their 
reports. As might have been expected, they were alike in spirit, 
and rivalled each other in violence and absurdity. The fact of the 
Princess Elizabeth having given her brother, the Count de Pro- 
vence, some diamonds was alleged as proof that the whole family 
(the race of Capet, as the king was called since his dethronement), 
was conspiring against the country. Louis himself was charged 
with having spent the national treasures on his journey to 
Varennes, with being a monopolist, and having endeavoured to 
starve the people by hoarding up corn, sugar, and coflee ; and, 
in more general terms, he was denounced as a public functionary 
who had neglected his duty, as a traitor, an oppressor, a brigand, 
and as deserving the punishment enacted by the law against such 
criminals. And it was demanded that there should be no delay 
in proceeding to his trial lest a natural death should rob justice of 
its victims, since the damp and confined air of the Temple was 
known already to have had an injurious effect on the health of 
the prisoners, and both Louis and Marie Antoinette had been ill. 
The only opposition to that demand came from Robespierre and his 
followers, the most violent Jacobins, who insisted that there was 
no need of any formal process, since the whole nation had con- 
demned the king on the tenth of August, and therefore the plain 
duty of the convention was to order his immediate execution ' in 
prosecution of the right of insurrection ; ' while one of them. 
Merlin, one of the deputies for Thionville, whose baseness and 
stupidity had drawn on him the ridicule of the very urchins in the 
streets, had the effrontery to affirm that the only thing he re- 
gretted was that, while the tyrant was sitting in the reporters' 
box on the tenth of August, he had not imitated Brutus, and 
plunged a dagger in his heart. 

That the king, therefore, should be brought to trial was soon 
decided, those who clamoured for it openly avowing their determi- 
nation that it should end in his death. But the task of making 
the arrangements for the trial, and of drawing the indictment, a 
lengthy and elaborate document, occupied so much time that it 
was not till the eleventh of December that he, who had hitherto 



i92 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1792. 

been kept iu entire ignorance of what was taking place, was visited 
by the mayor, who announced to him that he had come to con- 
duct him to the convention. Taken by surprise as he was, Louis 
behaved with great dignity. From the conviction that his death 
was at hand and inevitable he seemed to have derived a clearness 
of view and decision that he had never shown before. He con- 
sented to attend the convention, recognising, as he explained to 
the mayor, not. in any degree its authority, but solely its power 
to compel his compliance with their summons. And, as he passed 
in the mayor's carriage along the different streets, he could not 
restrain his surprise at the unusual aspect which the city pre- 
sented. Those who professed to be carrying out the desires of the 
people were well aware how small a number really bore ill-will to 
their innocent and benevolent prince, and with what horror the 
citizens in general regarded the idea of destroying him. And to 
prevent auj attempt at a rescue, not only was the carriage accom- 
panied by an escort of several hundred soldiers and six cannons, 
but the whole road from the Temple to the hall of assembly was 
lined with troops of all kinds ready , for action, with infantry, ca- 
vahy, and artillery, while similar divisions were posted at difi'erent 
points best calculated to command and overawe the city, in such 
numbers that it was reckoned that on this day nearly 100,000 men 
were under arms. 

When he reached and entered the hall the greater part of the 
assembly was violently' agitated. Few, except the most ferocious 
and callous of all could behold without emotion him whom in their 
earlier days all had acknowledged as the most patriotic and humane 
of monarchs advancing to meet his doom at their hands. Many 
were affected to tears. Louis himself was almost the only person 
unmoved. Never in the days of his prosperity at Versailles, 
surrounded by all the nobles. of his court to whom his will was 
law, had he displayed such serene dignity, such lofty majesty of 
demeanour, as now, when confronting those whom he knew to be 
thirsting for his blood. Pie was not, indeed, unprepared for such 
a termination. He had carefully studied the history of the 
English sovereign who had been in circumstances similar to his 
own. But as he had from the outset prescribed to himself a dif- 
ferent line of conduct from that adopted by Charles, so he pre- 
served that difference in the closing scene. Charles, mindful 
above all things to preserve his royal dignity, had disdained to 
acknowledge the authoritv of his judges, or to reply to questions 
which no one had a right to put to him. Louis, solicitous rather 
for his character as a man of virtue, good faith, and sincere affec- 
tion for his people, readily submitted to the most searching exami- 
nation under the most unfavorable circumstances. Ordinary 



A.D. 1702.] EXAMNATION OF LOUIS. 493 

prisoners are furnished with a copy of the indictment against them 
some days before they are called on to plead to it. But Louis had 
received no warning that he was to be put on his trial at all till 
he was thus suddenly called upon to answer questions on every 
article, which were put to him with the sternest brevity. Every 
mark of respect and even of courtesy was withheld from him. 
He was brought into the hall by Sant«rro, the ferocious leader of 
the attack on his palace in June, and was at once addressed by 
Barrere, the president. ' Louis/ said he, ' the French nation 
accuses you. You are about to hear the indictment which enu- 
merates the offences imputed to you. You may sit down.' And 
as each article was recited, he interrogated him on it. In the days 
of his prosperity Louis had been timid, unready, and slow of 
speech ; now he was prompt, unhesitating, and forcible. He met 
the whole general indictment by one general plea as to all actions 
done by him previously to the enactment of the constitution, that 
he had a right to perform them as chief of the nation : that for 
all had been done since the constitution itself, declared his 
ministers responsible, and not himself: and he also made separate 
and triumphant answers to each article. He was heard in silence ; 
but when, after having replied to every charge, he concluded by 
requesting a copy of the indictment, and permission to choose 
advocates for his defence, such an uproar ensued that Barrere 
himself, and few fouler spirits disgraced the convention, compared 
the assembly to an arena of gladiators. The whole body of 
Jacobins raised an outcry against the granting of the request, as if 
their destined victim were at once wrested by it from their hands, 
and the debate was adjourned till the next day; but already he was 
treated as a condemned prisoner, and Santerre, when he conducted 
him back to the Temple, conveyed at the same time an order to 
his guards that henceforth he was to be separated from his familvj^ 
and that his confinement for the rest of his life was to be solitary. 
The aid of counsel, however, was at last allowed him. And 
many of his old servants petitioned for the honour of defending 
him. Among the number of claimants, three, the old chancellor, 
Lamoignon de Malesherbes, Tronchet, and de Seze, were selected 
(their self-devotion well deserves that their names should never 
be forgotten), and they at once applied themselves to the task 
before them with a zeal proportionate to the interests at stake, 
which they rightly conceived to be not solely the safety of their 
king, but the honour of their nation. Louis himself cast off 
his usual apathy to aid them. Not that he had the slightest hope 
of a favorable result. On the contrary, he was convinced that 
those who were to be his judges were unalterably determined on 
his death, and he warned his faithful advocates that their loyalty 



4:94 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1792. 

could have no influence on his own fate, and only risked their 
being involved in the same condemnation. For his life, therefore, 
he had no anxiety, as having no hope. But he was scrupulously 
desirous ' to have his memory free from stain, and to establish his 
innocence : that was the only victory within his reach.' And for 
tliis end he laboured with his counsel in the examination of his 
papers, giving de Malesherbes information, and suggesting diiferent 
topics and arguments with as miich calmness as if it were some 
stranger, and not himself, whose life depended on the issue of the 
trial. 

Meanwhile the Jacobins, knowing not only that it was but a 
mere fraction of the nation, or even of the Parisian populace, that 
wished the king's destruction, but that even in the convention 
they themselves were in a minority, were labouring with un- 
wearied diligence to terrify the other parties in the assembly into 
submission. Under their guidance the municipal council passed 
resolution after resolution demanding the king's instant execution ; 
and mob after mob carried petitions to the same eff'ect to the bar 
of the convention. One gang was clothed in rags, and declared 
themselves to be starving thi-ough the machinations of Louis; 
another, composed of cripples and women in widows' garments, 
professed to have suffered their mutilations and lost their husbands 
by the fire of the king's troops on the tenth of August. And 
these tricks were not without effect even on those who knew the 
petitioners to be impostors ; but who saw in their shameless 
importunity sufficient proof how little those who had contrived 
these scenes would scruple to avenge themselves on any deputies 
who should presume to oppose their will. 

Ten days had originally been all that had been allowed for the 
preparation of the king's defence ; but one cause or another 
contributed to produce delay, and finally the twenty-sixth of 
December was appointed as the day for hearing his advocates. 
The day before (it was Christmas Day), not doubting from the 
impatience of his enemies that his sentence would speedily be 
pronounced, and uncertain how rapidly its execution might follow, 
he made his will ; not indeed that he had any wealth to bequeath, 
for so destitute was he that more than once in the last few months 
he had known the pangs of actual hunger, but to recommend 
himself, his fate here and hereafter, and that of his faithful queen, 
of his children, and of all that were dear to him, to God, as ' the 
only witness of his thoughts, the only Being to whom he could 
address himself,' to implore the pardon of any whom involuntax'ily 
he might have inj ured ; to express his own pardon of those who, 
without any cause, were his enemies ; and earnestly to exhort his 
son, if he should have the misfortune to become king, to discard 



A.D. 1702.] SPEECH OF THE KING'S COUNSEL. 495 

all hatred and resentment against anyone on account of his own 
misfortunes and sufferings. 

No document more touching in its hopelessness, more admirable 
in its fortitude and universal charity, was ever penned. It was 
equally characteristic of Louis that, while thus pouring out his 
inmost thoughts to his God, he disdained the use of a single 
argument in the defence which was to be made to the assembly, 
which seemed calculated to excite the sympathy of man. l3e 
Seze, who was to be the spokesman, had prepared an elaborate 
appeal to the feelings of the nation, and even of the judges. It 
was so eloquently expressed that it drew tears from the eyes of his 
colleagues. But Louis insisted on its being struck out. The 
minds of his judges, he said, were fully made up. To appeal to 
their pity he felt would be degrading, as he knew it would be 
useless. He would stand only on his innocence : and the lawyers 
could not contest the propriety and dignity of his decision. 

In spite, however, of the limitations imposed on him by Louis' 
sense of what was due to himself, de Seze's speech was a masterly 
defence of his client, both in respect of his own conduct, and of 
that of the nation which was now stated to be his accuser. Louis 
had been born, as he proved, a hereditary and absolute monarch. 
The constituent assembly itself had conferred on him a new and 
limited authoritj'^ ; declaring his person at the same time sacred 
and inviolable, and subjecting him to no penalty for the most 
extreme misgovernment beyond the loss of his throne ; and the act 
of the assembly was both in fact and in law the act of the nation 
itself. The speaker next animadverted on the character of the 
tribunal. There was no separation of powers, no judges or jury- 
men sworn to decide truly on evidence : the same persons were 
juiy, judges, and, what was more shocking, accusers also. The 
prisoner had no power of challenge, while a majority of a single 
voice was to suffice for his condemnation. He analysed and dis- 
proved every charge separately ; and, forbidden as he had been by 
Louis himself to appeal to the mercy of his judges, he closed one 
of the greatest speeches preserved in the annals of French j iiris- 
prudence by an appeal to the judgment of posterity. These were 
his closing words : ^ ' Listen, I hear beforehand the judgment 
which History will bid Fame record on this transaction. Louis 
ascended the throne at twenty years of age. At twenty years of 
age, he, on the throne, set an example of virtue to the whole 
nation. He was free alike from culpable weakness and from 
corrupting passions. He was frugal, just, rigidly virtuous. He 

1 La Terreur, v. 282-9 . To which indeed of the whole of the last six 
work the author is indebted for most months of 1792. 
of the detaila of Louis's trial, and 



i9Q MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1793. 

ehowed himself tlie constant friend of the people. The people 
desired the removal of a tax which was burdensome to them : he 
removed it. The people dercanded the abolition of serfdom : he 
began to abolish it oa his own domains. The people solicited 
reforms in the criminal law, to soften the fate of accused persons : 
he established those reforms. The people desired that thousands ' 
of Frenchmen, whom the rigour of our customs had up to that 
time deprived of the rights which belong to free citizens, should 
acquire or recover those rights : he conferred those rights on 
them by irrevocable laws. The people desired liberty : he gave 
it. He even outran their wishes by his own sacrifices : and yet it 
is in the name of this same people that to-day demands are made. 
. . . Citizens, I cannot go on. I pause in the view of history. 
Recollect that History will judge your judgment, and that her 
verdict will be that of ages.' 

Louis himself said a few words, chiefly to exculpate himself 
from the charge, too absurd to seem, except to so tender a con- 
science, worth a refutation, that on the tenth of August he had 
willingly shed the blood of the people, and to deny that the 
miseries of that day were attributable to him. He appealed to his 
conduct on all occasions, and to the repeated proofs of affection for 
the people which he had given, as evidence that he was willing to 
spare their blood even at the expense of his own. They ought, 
he averred, to relieve him for ever from such an imputation. He 
was desired to withdraw. The reading of the indictment, his 
examination, and the speech of a single lawyer, constituted the 
entire proceedings of the most momentous trial that had ever 
taken place in the kingdom. 

But though all parties had agreed on this hurrying over the 
trial, fierce and singularly protracted debates ensued on the manner 
in which the verdict was to be pronounced. It was settled at last 
that three questions should be put to the assembly : whether 
Louis was guilty ; whether his sentence should be pronounced by 
the convention, or by the whole people ; and what that sentence 
should be. And those who wished to save Louis contended strongly 
that this last question should be that on which the first vote 
should be taken ; from a belief that if it were settled that death 
was to be his fate if found guilty, many would acquit him 
who would convict him if there seemed any probability that his 
conviction might be followed by a milder sentence. We need not 
dwell upon more than one or two circumstances of the debates, 
which lasted many days. It appeared that the moderate party, 
which wished to save the king's life, though perhaps all did not 
desire, and none thought it possible, to save his authority, was far 
larger than had been supposed ; and that the Girondins' profes- 



A.D. 1793.] TEIAL OF THE KING. 497 

sions of humanity were but the basest hypocrisy : in fact, their 
chief orator, Vergniaud, made a long- speech expressly to repudiate 
the idea of the king's personal inyiolability, as ' a dogma degi-ading 
to reason.' On the other hand, some of the king's defenders took 
an equally bold line. They were led by Lanjuinais, a deputy 
from Brittany, who had as such been one of the founders of the 
Breton club, from which however the atrocious sentiments of 
those who obtained the lead in it had gradually driven him.' 
He openly denied the right of the convention to pronounce 
sentence on the king, or to be regarded as a legal tribunal at all ; 
and he would not be silenced, though the Jacobins tried to 
intimidate him by uproar, and by the assertion, intended to raise 
the audience in the galleries against him, that he ' preferred the 
safety of a tyrant to the safety of the people.' He had more than 
one supporter as humane and as bold as himself 5 one of whom, 
Morisson, from La Vend»5e, endeavoui-ed to turn aside the vote for 
death by a formal amendment, that Louis should be banished, but 
should be allowed a decent pension. But their party was too 
small by itself to effect anything; and the protraction of the 
debate gave the Jacobins time to make fresh demonstrations to 
terrify their opponents. They even brought up a large train of 
artillery from St.-Denis, as if they contemplated a new insurrection 
on a larger scale than ever ; and, finally, they, with the assistance 
of the Girondins, carried every point on which discussions had 
been raised in the manner most unfavorable to Louis. It was 
decided that the verdict was to be taken, not on all the counts in 
the indictment separately, but on all together ,• that the vote of 
the majority was to decide, though Lanjuinais had pointed out 
that in every court of law in France a majority of two-thirds was 
necessary to a conviction ; and the eighteenth of January was 
appointed for the day on which the votes should be taken. 

The hall was opened before daylight, that the galleries might 
be packed by gangs of ruffians, carefully tutored by the Jacobins, 
to intimidate with their savage shouts those who were believed to 
be about to vote for mercy ; and every approach to the hall was 
occupied by similar gangs, to mutter personal threats into the ear 
of each individual deputy. Lanjuinais, and those who acted with 
him, paid no attention to these miscreants, but forced their way in 
disdainful silence through the crowd. One deputy made a moment- 
ar}"^ impression on his threateners by his unexpected heroism 
The Marquis de Villette was one of the old nobility of France : 
he had been stripped by the devolution of his rank ; but, though 

1 Alison, speaks of him as one of this point may certainly be trusted, 
the Girondin party, but he might that he had never belonged to it. 
have learned from Lamartine, who in 



498 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1793. 

his person was small and feeble, in fearless nobility of spirit he 
was worthy of his ancient race. He laughed in the face of those 
who dared to threaten him. Instantly a score of daggers were at 
his throat, and he was bidden to pledge himself to vote for the 
death of the tyrant if he would escape instant death himself. He 
pushed aside the weapons, and, looking the assassins in the face, 
declared that he would not obey them, and that they dared not 
kill him. Awed by his fearlessness, they shrank back ; and he 
passed in, to give his vote for the king's preservation. The voting 
began. Each deputy was summoned in turn to the tribune to 
record his vote ; and, as it was for death or mercy, the spectators 
in the galleries cheered or hooted the voter ; while the Jacobins 
from the body of the hall from time to time sent them up wine, 
in which they, and especially the women, drank toasts 'to the 
tyrant's death.' The cheering that greeted Vergniaud and his 
party, as one after the other they voted for death, was unusually 
loud and vehement. From one only of all those who declared 
for the fatal sentence were the acclamations withheld. The in- 
famous Duke of Orleans had renounced not only his princely 
title but his family name^ and had accepted that of Egalite, given 
him by Hebert, one of the vilest of the revolutionary journalists. 
As Egalite he now mounted the tribune and affixed his signature 
to a declaration, that ' solely occupied with his duty, and convinced 
that all who had assumed or should assume sovereignty over the 
people deserved death, he voted for death.' Even the ruffians in 
the galleries shuddered at the nearest kinsman of Louis thus aid- 
ing in his destruction ; and Robespierre himself did not spare his 
sarcasms on his baseness : but the vote was not the less valid, and 
went to swell the majority when, on the morning of the seven- 
teenth, the collection of the votes having occupied the whole of 
the day and night, Vergniaud, as president, pronounced that, by 
a majority of i387 to 334, the convention had condemned Louis 
to death. Subsequent votes refused to permit any appeal, as his 
advocates demanded, to be made to the whole nation, and deter- 
mined that the execution should take place within twenty-four 
hours. And, soon after midnight on the twentieth, Louis was 
roused from his bed to be informed by the secretary of the 
executive council that on the twenty-first he was to die. The 
announcement did not seem to take him by surprise. He even 
seemed to receive it as a welcome release from suffering ; and, in 
reply, placed in the hands of the officials a letter addressed to the 
convention, containing a few petitions such ashe hoped hisapproach- 
ing end might move even his enemies to grant. His first requests 
were, as his thoughts had always been, for others : that the 
convention would spare his devoted wife, his much-loved children 



A.D. 1793.] THE KING'S INTERVIEW WITH HIS FA]\nLY. 499 

and his sister, and allow them to retire in safety and freedom from 
the country; and that his faithful servants might not suffer for 
their attachment to him. For himself he asked a respite of three 
days, to prepare to present himself before God ; permission to see 
his family, from whom he had now been separated for nearly six 
weeks ; and to receive the visits of a priest of his own selection. 
They were not great indulgences to be allowed to a king ; but 
they were greater than those who had him in their power were 
disposed to grant. They allowed him indeed to see his family 
and a priest ; but they peremptorily refused the respite : and to 
his petition for the release of his wife and family they replied in 
terms, to which the fate reserved for them gave the appearance of 
a most cruel mockery: 'That the French nation, as great in its 
beneficence as it was rigorous in its justice, would take care of his 
family and arrange for them a suitable destiny.' 

Even the scanty indulgences which the convention had granted 
to its doomed monarch, the municipal council, as the guardians of 
the city prisons, contrived to abridge, refusing to relax the re- 
gulations that the sentries should never lose sight of the prisoner : 
so that neither his interview with his confessor nor even that 
with his wife and children, was allowed to be entirely private ,• the 
greatest concession that could be obtained only extending to a 
permission to retire to a chamber with a glass door, so that the 
soldiers, though seeing all that took place, might be unable to hear 
the last words of the miserable family who were never more to 
meet on earth. It is believed that it was from the king's own 
lips that the queen first learnt the sentence which had been passed 
upon him. But her sobs and those of the princess were the only 
sounds that reached the guard. The soldiers could see that the 
king was often speaking, but his voice was still too calm and equal 
for them to hear a single word. At a quarter-past ten, when the 
interview had lasted nearly two hours, he rose from his seat, and 
they prepared to leave him. He had need of the night for 
prayer and rest. And the priest, an Irish gentleman of the name 
of Edgeworth, vicar-general of Paris, to whom he had already 
confessed in the earlier part of the evening, was again introduced 
to pray with him once more. Presently Louis retired to rest, and 
so composed was his mind that when, at five in the morning, his 
servant came by his orders to call him, he found him sleeping 
tranquilly and soundly. He arose : he had fixed this, the last 
morning of his life, to receive the Communion, but it was not 
without great difiiculty that Edgeworth had obtained leave to 
administer it : the council pretending a suspicion that he might 
poison the host which he was to consecrate. And his devotions 
were hardly ended when the street outside began to resound with 



500 MODEKN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1703. 

the movement of troops, tlie noise of drums, the heavy roll of 
cannon. For the Jacobins knew -with what horror the crime 
they were preparing to commit was viewed by the majority of 
the citizens ; and, fearing that even at the last moment an attempt 
might be made to rescue him, were prepared to repel force by 
force, and lined the streets, the whole way from the Temple to the 
Place, formerly known as that of Louis XV., but lately renamed 
the Place of the Eevolution, where the scaffold was erected, with 
dense lines of troops ; while, fm-ther to prevent any movement of 
his friends, an edict was issued strictly forbidding any citizen from 
appearing in any street on the line of the procession or even at 
the windows. The square around the scaffold, as one which all 
but the most hardened would wish to avoid, was the only spot 
were spectators were allowed to assemble. 

At nine o'clock Santerre rudely burst open the door of the 
king's room, announcing that he had come to conduct him to the 
scaffold. No insult could move him now. He at once entered 
the carriage, accompanied by Edgeworth and two of the municipal 
council : occupying his last moments in reading the prayers for 
the dying. Only for a single moment was his equanimity dis- 
turbed, when the assistants of the executioner laid hold of him 
to bind his hands. For one instant the spirit of his ancestors 
rose up in his veins. ' That/ said he, ' is an insult to which I 
will never submit.' ' Yield, sire,' said the imdaunted Edgeworth; 
* it IS thus that they bound your Saviour before you.' Without 
another word, the king held out his hands. The men bound 
him, and cut his hair. He advanced to the edge of the scaffold. 
'Frenchmen,' said he, ' I die innocent : I pardon my slayers. I pray 
God that no vengeance for my blood may fall upon this nation.' 
The executioners, fearing that he meant to make a long speech, 
seized and fastened him to the fatal plank. ' Son of St. -Louis,' 
exclaimed Edgeworth, as he was placed beneath the knife, ' son 
of St.-Louis, ascend to heaven.' The knife fell, and all was over. 

Of the character of Louis XVI., what has been said of the 
events of his reign and of his actions is sufficient evidence. No 
sovereign more absolutely blameless in his private life or more 
sincere in his love for his people ever adorned a throne. His only 
fault had been that he had loved them not wisely, but too well ; 
tliat he had conceded all their demands, without considering 
whether they were as yet qualified rightly to use and profit by his 
liberality ; that he had refrained from all measures of rigour, or 
even of restraint, without considering that to coerce or even to 
chastise the immoderate desires and violence of a few unruly spirits 
might be a duty which, as king of the whole nation, he owed to 
those of better regulated judgment and less unhealthy constitu- 
tion. If we compare him with that one of our own kings, whose 



A.D. 1793.] CHAEACTER OF LO'JIS. 501 

murder, under somewhat similar circumstances, invariably sug- 
gests the comparison, we must allow that, though Charles equalled 
him in a similar desire for the happiness of his subjects ; though 
he remarkably resembled him in his zeal for religion, which fur- 
nished one pretext for the calamities which befell both ; and though 
he was by far superior to him in intellectual ability and in active 
courage, Louis, on the other hand, had the advantage over Charles, 
not only in good faith and sincerity, but in the liberality of his 
government and his strict adherence to the laws of the land. It 
cannot be denied that Charles, having succeeded to authority 
which, though kingly in its name and nature, was strictly limited 
by written law and immemorial custom, gave his people just and 
grave cause of complaint by his deliberate violation of privileges 
secured to them by the ancient constitution of the kingdom, and 
confirmed to them by repeated enactments of his greatest and 
wisest predecessors. But Louis, though bom to the most absolute 
authority, voluntarily abridged and limited it ,• renouncing prero- 
gatives, which no small section of his subjects believed to be suit- 
able to his dignity, if not necessary for the welfare of the people 
themselves. Charles was accused of having designed to erect an 
unlimited and tyrannical government, in a country where absolute 
power was a thing unknown to the law ; and, though the doc- 
tjine of the responsibility of the ministers for every act of the 
sovereign, which had been fully established for nearly 300 years, is 
alone sufficient to condemn his judges and the sentence by which 
he died, it is impossible to deny that he had violated the esta- 
blished laws of the kingdom, and had adopted a line of conduct 
which, if unchecked, would have rendered his authority absolute. 
Louis, on the other hand, wag condemned, not because he had 
offended against a single law of either the old unlimited mo- 
narchy, or of the new constitutional sovereignty, but because he 
had been born a king ; and by his birthright had succeeded to an 
authority to which all previous generations of Frenchmen had 
made it their chief glory to submit. 

The works chiefly consulted for the three preceding chapters 
have been Lacretelle's ' History of France during the Eighteenth 
Century,' and the 'History of LaTerreur,' by M. Ternaux ; 'The 
Correspondence of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette,' edited by 
M. Feuillet de Conches ; ' L'Ancien Regime,' by M. de Tocque- 
ville ; * Considerations sur la Eev. fran^aise,' by Madame de Stael ; 
Dumont's 'Souvenirs sur Mirabeau;' The Memoirs of Madame 
Campan, Dumouriez, the Princess de Lamballe, Count Dumas, 
Bertrand de Moleville, the Marquis de Ferrieres ; Dr. Moore's 
' Journal during a Eesidence in France ;' Lamartine's 'History of 
the Girondins ;' Alison's 'History of Europe,' &c. &c. 



602 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1793. 



CHAPTER XXII. 
A.D. 1793 — 1799. 

IT might have been supposed that the fury even of the Jacobina 
and Cordeliers would have been satiated with the murder of 
such a prince as Louis. But with monsters whose sole passion was 
bloodshed even that august victim seemed but to whet their appe- 
tite for further slaughter. Robespierre was now master of Paris, 
and he so used his power that, even after the hoiTors of the last 
six months, after the atrocities of the insurrection of August, the 
massacres of September, and the murder of the king himself, the 
next year and a half are distinguished as emphatically the Reign 
of Terror. God was formally disowned. Religion was pro- 
nounced an imposture ; and those who led the nation into this 
blasphemy acted as if they really believed these impious profes- 
sions. The beauteous and magnanimous queen, the meek and 
holy Princess Elizabeth, shared the fate of their husband and 
brother. His innocent heir met a still more cruel death from an 
uninterrupted course of ill-treatment. Day after day waggon-loads 
of victims were dragged through the streets to perish, for no crime, 
beneath the accursed guillotine ; while the atrocities which the pro- 
vinces endured outran even the horrors of the capital. Batches of 
sufferers were drowned by hundreds in the Loire, Dense columns 
were mowed down by cannon shot on the banks of the Rhone ; 
till, at last, as if they could find no more to destroy, the murder- 
era began to turn one upon another. Robespierre hated as much 
as he despised the Girondins. Within six months of the king's 
death he had sent all that party to the scaftbld to which they 
had consigned their sovereign. His contempt was equally fatal 
to Egalite ; his jealousy struck down even the audacious Danton ; 
and finally, he perished himself at the hands of a gang of his 
former associates, who saw no other way of saving their own lives 
but by his destruction. It is remarkable and instructive, that of ■ 
all those who had taken a prominent part in the trial of Louis, 
Lanjuinais, his intrepid defender, was almost the only one who 
survived this race of mutual murder. 

The Reign of Terror was succeeded by one of intrigues and 



A.D. 1793.] EISE OF NAPOLEON. 503 

revolutions ; intrigues too complicated to unravel, even were 
they worth unravelling; revolutions too numerous to be easily 
counted. In the appetite for universal innovation the very Calen- 
dar had not escaped : the names of the months had been changed, 
and the memory of their new titles is preserved by the insur- 
rections or revolutions of Thermidor, Fructidor, Floreal, Prairial, 
Vend(5miaire, and Brumaire ; till the aspirations after liberty and 
equality, which had been the pretext for such innumerable and 
inexpiable crimes, ended in subjecting the nation to the absolute 
authority of a youthful soldier, who, though serving in the French 
army, was a foreigner by birth, and who, though he from the first 
identified himself with what he affirmed and believed to be the 
glory of France, and for a time induced the nation to identify itself 
still more warmly and completely with his own, preserved through- 
out the characteristics of the race from which he sprang ; ming- 
ling the supple craft of the Italian, the tenacious stubbornness of 
the Corsican, with the unscrupulous ambition which had long 
prompted the policy of French statesmen, and the unfeeling callous 
levity which of late had been still more odiously displayed both by 
the rulers and the people. 

In some points it cannot be denied that he deserved the pre- 
eminence at which he arrived ; for history has handed down the 
names of few men, if indeed of any, richer in intellectual gifts, 
in genius for war, for organisation, for administration. But, in 
another point of view there have been few who have either in- 
herited or acquired sovereign power who have been less qualified 
to exercise it for the benefit of their subjects, since few, if any, 
have been more completely destitute of all principle, more in- 
dififerent to, if we may not rather say more incapable of compre- 
hending the claims of religion, of good faith, or of humanity ; 
few who from the beginning to the end of their lives have so com- 
pletely excluded all considerations but those of self-aggrandise- 
ment, and have so entirely made utter unalloyed selfishness their 
sole rule of action. Such, however, as he was both in his intellec- 
tual greatness and his moral littleness, the interest of the French 
Revolution from the close of the Reign of Terror centres wholly 
in his exploits and fortunes. And our closing chapters may 
therefore be most fitly devoted to a survey of his career ; equally 
startling in the rapidity of his rise, in the vast extent of the 
power which for many years he exerted over the whole continent 
of Europe, and in the completeness of his fall. 

In September 1793 the French army was investing Toulon, 
whose citizens in the preceding month had revolted against the 
murderous tyranny of the Jacobins, and had admitted an English 
fleet into their harbour, and a Spanish garrison into their town, 



504 MODERN HISTORY. [a.-d. 1794. 

and was meeting with sucli success as miglit be expected from a 
force wliose commander-in-chief was Cartea^lx, a painter, igno- 
rant of the Tery rudiments of military service, and who, as com- 
manders over him, had a body of commissioners from the conven- 
tion, equally incapable with himself, when Captain Napoleon 
Buonaparte, an officer in the artillery, paid a casual visit to 
Salicetti, one of the commissioners who, like himself, was a native 
of Corsica. The slightest inspectioc of the works of the besieging 
force was sufficient to show him why they as yet had made no 
progress ; and he explained to Salicetti the errors which had 
hitherto been committed, and ihe way in which they might be 
remedied, with such lucidity that the commissioners agreed to 
detain him in the camp, and, in spite of his youth, for he was but 
little more than four-and-twenty,* gave him the command of the 
artillery. He speedily placed all the arrangements on a new 
footing ; procured additional guns, erected new batteries in proper 
places (those which Carteaux had constructed to cannonade the 
English fleet would not carry above one-third of the distance) ; 
and in all his arrangements displayed such energy and capacity 
that, though General Duteil presently arrived to take the com- 
mand of the artillery, while Carteaux was superseded by General 
Dugommier, a veteran of courage and experience, the chief credit 
of the recovery of Toulon was assigned by the general opinion of 
the troops who had been engaged to the young captain ; and it is 
not unlikely that the perception of the superiority in reputation 
which he had attained over that of his superiors in rank first sug- 
gested to him the idea of eventually making himself the master of 
the whole nation. It is certain that his political conduct was 
from this time forth most skilfully shaped for the furtherance of 
that object, if he had as yet conceived it. He had previously been 
closely connected with Robespierre ; but he had too much pene- 
tration not to feel assured that France would not long submit to 
the rule of such a monster, and he began to detach himself from 
him, refusing to comply with his entreaty to hasten to Paris and 
to take the command of the forces in the metropolis. Had he 

' It seems absolutel}^ certain that been annexed to France. But the 

Napoleon was born, not, as he said certificate of his age, signed with his 

after he had become Emperor, in own hand, on the occasion of his 

August 1769, but in February 1768. marriage, gives the date already 

His motive in falsifying the date of mentioned as tliat of his birth, and 

his birth was that he might appear seems evidence too strong to be dis- 

to have been born under the flag of puted. It must be remembered, 

France, so that the French might not however, that his latest biographer, 

seem to be ruled over by an alien: Mr. Lanfrey, adheres to the date 1760, 

for, in the interval between February for reasons which it ig. not, perhaps, 

1768 and August 1769, Co.-sica had difficult to conjecture. 



A.D. 1796.] HE OBTAINS THE COMMAND IN ITALY. 505 

yielded, he would have been involved in the tyrant's ruin, as 
Henriot, whom he was intended to supersede, was involved in it ; 
and the subsequent history of France and of all Europe would 
have been widely different from that which has since been seen. 

Equal to the shrewdness with which he separated himself from 
the falling Jacobins was the decision with which, at the end of 
the next year, he placed his military skill at the service of the 
convention ; and gained that victory over the populace which 
established the directory. Nor could the conflict have been fol- 
lowed ty any result more calculated to further his own views, for, 
with the exception of Carnot, (prevented from being formidable to 
any rival by his impracticable adherence to republican opinions, of 
which France was weary), the directors were all men of such 
moderate capacity as ensured their overthrow whenever it might 
seem seasonable to get rid of them; and he had already made 
the acquaintance of the most influential of the board, the Viscount 
Barras, who had been one of the commissioners at Toulon. In- 
deed, it was at the suggestion of Barras that he had been employed 
on that eventful day, the thirteenth Vendemiaire, as it was called in 
the revolutionary calendar, and he had now laid him under a per- 
sonal obligation which was about to receive a recompense of which 
Barras at least did not anticipate the value. Other motives in- 
deed, besides the high opinion which the director had conceived of 
the young officer's military abilities, combined to make him desire 
to serve him. Barras, as dissolute in his manners as any of the 
courtiers of Louis XV., had connected himself with a lady of 
singular attractions, the widow of another noble. General Count 
Beauharnais, whom Robespierre had sent to the guillotine ; and 
just as, after a brief acquaintance, her attractions began to pall 
upon him, Buonaparte became fascinated with them. She was 
somewhat older than he, and knew the importance of not wasting 
time ; his impatience was equally disinclined to admit delay ; and, 
in less than six months after the establishment of the directory, he 
received the hand of Madame Beauharnais, or Josephine, to give 
her the name by which alone she has been known since he placed 
a crown on his and on her head : and with it the command of the 
army for which Sch^rer's recent victory at Lonato had gained a 
secure footing on the Italian side of the Alps, and which was 
henceforth called the army of Italy. 

No command could have been better suited for the display of mili- 
tary skill. The campaign on which he was entering was indeed on a 
small scale, if it be compared with the gigantic operations of sub- 
sequent years : his own army consisting of less than 40,000 men, 
while the Austrians and Sardinians to whom he was opposed did 
not greatly exceed that number ; and they were commanded by 
23 



506 MODEEN HISTORY. [a-d. 1795. 

General Beaulieu, an officer whose experience could not be denied* 
for he had fought in all the wars against Frederic the Great, but 
■who was seventy-five years old, disqualified by his very experience 
from anticipating or fully comprehending novelties in tactics, and 
by his age from exerting vigour sufficient to cope with a youthful 
and energetic antagonist. Buonaparte lost no time. Quitting the 
arms of his bride within a week of his marriage, he reached the 
head-quarters of the army before the end of the month, and at 
once put his troops in motion. They were full of confidence from 
their recent victory, and admirably officered. Mass^na and Auge- 
reau were generals of divisions : and among the subalterns were 
Joubert, Launes, Junot, Murat, Victor, Marmont, and Suchet ; men 
to whose rare capacity for war the nation was afterwards indebted 
for no small portion of its military glory. The dates vdll show 
the rapidity of his movements, which of itself was a novelty to an 
enemy methodical and deliberate by nature, and fettered, as the 
Austrian generals still were, by the interference of the Aulic 
council. It was the eleventh of April when the armies first came 
in sight of each other ; in the course of the next four days Buona- 
parte fought and won three actions, at Montenotte, Millesimo, and 
Dego, by forced night marches surprising the enemy at points 
where no attack was expected, and finally separating the Austriana 
from the Sardinians, and driving their armies back on different lines. 
And on the twenty -fifth, having again defeated the Sardinians at 
Mondovi, he struck such terror into the citizens of Turin that they 
compelled their sovereign to sign an armistice, by which he 
renounced his alliance with the Empire, disbanded his ai'my, 
and even made a temporary surrender of some of his strongest 
fortresses. History at that time presented no other instance of 
a nation, though but of inferior power, being thus humbled in a 
fortnight. But Buonaparte did more than subdue the Pied- 
montese ; he subdued his own masters, the directory. His com- 
mission from them had been carefully- drawn in terms which 
forbade him to conclude armistices or truces : and so emphatic a 
warning did his treaty with the king furnish of his contempt for 
their authority that they at once took the alarm, and conceived 
the idea of dividing his army, and of entrusting the division that 
was to continue to act against the Austrians in the north to 
General Kellermann, while he himself was to march with the 
other division along the coast upon Rome and Naples. Keller- 
mann enjoyed a great renown for his share in the repulse of the ' 
Prussians at Valmy in 1792, the first advantage that had been 
gained by the French armies since the commencement of the Revo- 
lution : and, having been transferred to the army in Savoy the 
preceding year, he had fully maintained his reputation. But 



A.D. 1706.] HE CONQUERS ITALY. 507 

Buonaparte was resolved to share his command with no one. 
Before the new orders reached him, he had gained another victory 
over Beaulieu, at Lodi on the Adda ; and he felt such a convic- 
tion that he had made himself indispensable to the directory that, 
on reading their despatch, he did not hesitate to send in his resign- 
ation, telling them that ' they must have one general only, who 
should have their entire confidence. Every man,' he said, and 
said truly, * had his own way of making war. Kellermann had 
the greater experience, and would make war better than he him- 
self: but both together they would make it badly.' 

The directors were sorel}-- perplexed and divided. They feared 
for their own authority, if they should not accept his resignation ; 
if they should accept it, they apprehended the discontent of the 
army, naturally proud of and attached to its victorious chief: and 
their regard for the feelings of the soldiers was reinforced by an 
equally powerful consideration. The state was almost bankrupt, 
and the continuance of Buonaparte in his command offered the 
best prospect of replenishing the exhausted treasury. He had not 
only introduced a new strategy, but he had taught his soldiers a new 
motive for exertion, a desire for plunder. His order of the day on 
assuming the command had pointed out to them that the pro- 
vinces and towns of Italy were rich, and had promised them riches 
for themselves as the reward of victory : and the inducements 
which he had found so powerful with the troops, he had already 
begun to apply to the government at home. The very day after 
he had signed the armistice with the King of Sardinia, he an- 
nounced to them his intention of wringing 'some millions from the 
Duke of Parma,' and also of enriching the museums of Pai-is by 
stripping the different cities in the north of Itajy of the finest of 
the works of art, the choicest of the paintings and statues, with 
which they were so profusely embellished. Since the time of 
Charles VIII.^ there had been no instance of a conqueror stooping 
to plunder of that kind : but it was obvious that the general who 
had conceived the idea was the fittest instrument to carry it out. 
Nor did he lose time in the execution of it. Within a week of the 
battle of Lodi he had entered Milan in triumph, had levied on the 
Milanese, on Modena, and on Parma above thirty millions of francs ; 
providing pay for his own soldiers, for those of Kellermann, for the 
army on the Rhine, and sending a long train of waggons loaded 
with gold and splendid treasures of art to Paris. 

The directory seemed to have no choice, but to refuse to accept 
his resignation, to leave him the undivided command, placing 
Kellermann under his orders. They sought, indeed, indirectly to 

' V. ante, p. 7. 



508 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1797. 

pledge Wm to loyalty to their own government, by the compli- 
ments they paid to his * republican zeal ;' but it can hardly be 
supj)osed that they disguised from themselves the probable con- 
sec^uences of a conduct which was, in fact, submission to his 
dictation. And they did not conceal them from him j since, whether 
he had conceived the idea before or not, we learn, from his own 
language at St. Helena, that from this time forth he constantly 
cherished the anticipation that ' he might become a decisive actor 
in the political theatre.' It was at all events plain, that for the 
present he had become absolute master of his own movements, and 
free to make war or peace at his own discretion. He continued to 
make a brilliant use of his power. The Aulic council took a strange 
method of checking him by now sending against him Wurmser, a 
general a year or two older than Beaulieu. The result was such as 
might have been expected. After a succession of actions on a small 
scale, every one of which was to the advantage of the French, the 
Austrians were completely driven from the north of Italy, losing 
even Mantua the strongest fortress in the whole district. And, 
in the spring of 1797, the conqueror , crossed the Tyrolese Alps, 
into Styria ; and, again taking upon himself to negotiate with the 
enemy, in defiance of the known intentions of the directory, con- 
cluded an armistice at Leoben, which, in the course of the autumn, 
developed into the peace of Campo-Formio. The tei'ms of the 
treaty he himself arranged : it was even he that signed it, though 
invested with no diplomatic authority ; and the terms are singu- 
larly characteristic of his utter disregard of aU the established 
principles of public law, and the rights of nations. He exacted 
great cessions from the Empire, which was compelled to surrender 
Belgium, and to recognise the Rhine as the French frontier ; and, as 
a compensation, he gave it up Venice : a state with which France 
had no quarrel whatever ; but which throughout the war had 
preserved a careful neutrality, which he would not allow to 
save it. 

He had been led to the conclusion of this treaty by a belief that 
the directory were more eager than ever to get rid of him : but 
we have no space to dwell on the intrigues and dissensions in the 
capital, nor even in the share which he himself had in, apparently, 
strengthening the hands of the directory, but in reality in ensuring 
further their subservience to the army or, in other words, to himself, 
by sending Augereau to crush their enemies by force on the 
eighteenth Fructidor. He returned to Paris, where the directors 
did not dare to receive him with anything short of the highest 
honours ; though there was but little appropriateness in the com- 
pliments which Barras paid him, comparing him, in a set speech, 
not only toOsesar andPompey,but to Socrates; and but little cordia- 



A.D. 1798.] HE INVADES EGYPT. 509 

lity in the expression of his thanks in return, which iinmistakeably ^ 
intimated his opinion that some further change in the constitution 
was necessary. In fact, though the directory owed its present 
supremacy to his aid, that body and he mutually distrusted each 
other. They saw no safety for themselves, but in removing him 
from Paris ; while he was already listening to those who urged 
him to supplant them ; though he finally decided that, to quote 
a favourite phrase of his, ' the pear was not yet ripe.' 

They now proposed to employ him on a new expedition ; the 
invasion of England. He was willing enough to find himself 
again at the head of an army, but was resolved to choose the 
enemy to be attacked. And, though he had already imbibed that 
hatred of England which was one of his most predominant 
feelings throughout his life, he was quite convinced that 
England was unassailable on her own shores by any force which 
the republic could employ against her. But though impreg- 
nable at home, he conceived that she might be vulnerable in her 
distant settlements. Of these dependencies India was the most 
valuable ; the road to India lay through Egypt : and he therefore 
proposed to the directory to direct their eflforts first against that 
country, which there was no reason to believe possessed any 
great means of resistance. It was no objection to such a step in 
his mind that France had no cause of quarrel whatever with 
either Egypt or Turkey. Their weakness was in itself provoca- 
tion sufficient to one who, as he wrote to a minister, some years 
afterwards, ' had only one object, to succeed.' The directory was 
so eager to remove him to the greatest possible distance, that they 
preferred an expedition against Egypt to one against England. 
And in the spring of 1798 they placed, not only an army of 25,000 
men, but a fleet also at his disposal, with almost unlimited authority 
to employ it in any place, and in any manner which he might 
choose. In a military point of view the expedition against Egypt 
would not be worth notice ; but some of the incidents reveal so 
much of the general's character that they cannot be passed over. 
It is melancholy that it should be necessary to add, that they are 
such as no subterfuge can palliate, no indulgence can regard but aa 
proofs of the most absolute indifference to every principle of 
religion, and even of humanity. His former friends the Jacobins, 
had publicly renounced Christianity : it might have been sup- 
posed that he was wantonly seeking to identify himself with them 
when he attended the worship of Mahomet in the mosque of Cairo, 

1 He said, 'Lorsque le bonheur clu 348. He could hardly allege more 

peuple Fran^ais sera assis sur de plainly that the laws which she as yet 

meilleures his organiques I'Europe had required alteration, 
entiere deviendra libre.' — Larifrey, i. 



510 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1798. 

ioining audibly in the responses, and afterwards issued a pro- 
clamation in which he assured the Egyptians that he and his 
army were true Mussulmans : that it was as champions of Maho- 
met and his religion that they had lately stripped the Pope of his 
temporal possessions ; and that his arrival among them was ' fore- 
told in more than twenty passages ' of the holy book of the Koran :' 
while, in private conversation with his officers, he regretted that 
in the age in which he lived he could not imitate the example of 
Alexander, who had declared himself the son of Jupiter. It was a 
profitless blasphemy, for not only did the Egyptians deride it, but 
his own soldiers were disgusted by it, not probably from any deep 
sense of religion, but from the feeling that they w^ere of a race so 
far superior to the Egyptians that to imitate them in anything 
was a degradation. Bat, if barbarity in deeds is still more odious 
than blasphemy of language, we must conceive a still deeper 
detestation of the massacre of the garrison of Jaffa in cold blood, 
after the town was suiTendered, when he deliberately slaughtered 
2,500 prisoners who had fallen into his hands, because, if he had 
let them live, he must have released them. So atrocious did the 
order seem even to his own army, though little troubled by un- 
necessary scruples, that several officers positively refused to aid in 
carrying it out : and, that he himself was aware of the universal 
reprobation with which it had met, is sufficiently evident from the 
various pretexts by which at different times he strove to account 
for, or to palliate it. 

In all his operations against the Egyptian troops alone he could 
not fail to be successful, for the best of them were only dashing 
cavalry, imacquainted with European manoeuvres. When the 
Mahometan valour was guided by English skill, he was compelled 
to retreat before it ; and to leave Acre, the scene of one of the 
most brilliant exploits of Cceur de Lion in the Middle Ages, 
to bear renewed testimony to the undying superiority of British 
discipline and steadiness. But out of the siege of Acre arose a 
sudden and total change of his plans. It was now the summer of 
1799; and in the war with the Empire, which had been renewed at 
the beginning of the year, and in which Austria had obtained the 
alliance of Kussia, things had been going on as badly as possible 
for the French, though their army in Italy consisted of above 
100,000 men, and was led by such redoubted captains as Scherer, 
Jourdan, Macdonald, Joubert, and Moreau. Bat every one of 
these great generals were successively defeated in a campaign 
which did not last six months. The whole army was driven from 
Italy ; and it seemed for a moment doubtful whether the victorious 
enemy might not endeavour to retaliate by an invasion of the 



A.T). 1799.] HE EETUENS TO FEANCE. . 511 

French provinces on the Upper Rhine. But no news of these 
disasters had reached Napoleon. The destruction bj Nelson of 
the fleet which had conveyed him to Egypt had cut off all his 
communications with France ; the army knew nothing of its 
country, the nation knew nothing of its army, till, in the course of 
negotiations with the English officers on the coast for the exchange 
of prisoners, Sir Sidney Smith, to whom his repulse before Acre 
had been mainly due, sent him a bundle of French newspapers 
which one of our cruisers had intercepted. It may fairly be said 
that the communication affected the future fortunes of the whole 
of Europe. It showed him that 'the pear had become ripe;' 
that the blows which had fallen on the Italian army had wounded 
the directors also ; that, as in such a government was inevitable, 
every fresh calamity which befell the nation under their rule, was 
imputed to them by the people ; that the directors themselves 
were divided into two parties, hating and plotting against each 
other ; while there was open war between both sections and the 
assembly, in which they would surely fall ; and, that if he were 
not on the spot to take advantage of the coming change, the fruit 
would be gathered by some other hand. Indeed, though of this 
he was not aware, one party had already urged Moreau to seize 
the dictatorship, but that general was too sincerely attached to 
republican principles ; while some of the directors themselves were 
contemplating the restoration of the Bourbons. His decision was 
taken in an instant. He would leave the army in Egypt to take 
care of itself, and return to Paris. In spite of his victories, that 
army was by this time in a deplorable condition. Above a fifth of 
its number had perished in the difi'erent battles ; the plague had 
committed great ravages ; their supplies and ammunition were 
nearly exhausted ; and he had already contemplated the proba- 
bility of being forced to make peace and evacuate the country.^ 
In such a state of things no commander could desert his soldiers 
without the deepest dishonour. There was no man in the whole 
force whom every principle of military duty so imperatively re- 
quired to remain at his post that he might extricate his comrades 
from the difiiculfies into which he had brought them. But the 
Revolution had extinguished all the ancient ideas of duty, and 
Buonaparte never thought of anyone but himself. He even, 
for his own purposes, weakened the army further by taking from 
it Lannes, Murat, Marmont, and others, the flower of its officers, 
of whose attachment and resolution he foresaw he might have 
need. And, at the end of August, he secretly set sail for France, 

* See Lanfrey's History of Napoleon, i, 414 note. 



512 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1799. 

communicating Lis departure by letter to General Kleber, who 
was with his division at Cairo, never dreaming of his desertion by 
his commander-in-chief; and desiring him to take the command, 
and to prepare for the evacuation of the country if the plague 
should continue to thin its ranks. 

He had a stormy voyage, and a narrow escape of being captured 
by an English fleet ; but he escaped all dangers, and at the end of 
the first week of October landed at Fr^jus, and hastened to Paris. 
By a fortunate coincidence a despatch announcing his defeat of the 
Turks at Aboukir, on the twenty-fifth of Julj'^, in a combat which, 
though in reality there were not 10^,000 men on either side, he had 
magnified into a battle of great importance, had arrived a day or two 
before. As the first intelligence which had been received of him for 
many months, it had been the more welcome ; and now the arrival 
of himself on the heels of his victory seemed to the anxious and 
unquiet spirits, who had been alternately desponding over the dis- 
asters of their armies in Europe and chafing at the incompetency 
of their rulers, to supply the only but the sure means of saving 
the coimtry from the abyss of dishonour and calamity into which 
it was sinking. Tavo dates are sufiicient to show with what sin- 
gular felicity his return was timed. On the sixteenth of October 
he reached Paris : on the tenth of November he was master of 
France. For before he quitted Egypt he had resolved to render 
himself such ; and the Egyptian expedition itself, though a com- 
plete failure, and though, while Britain was mistress of the seas, 
it was impossible that it should not be a failure, had served his 
own objects as well as if it had been crowned with the most 
brilliant success. It had kept him out of sight while the mind of 
the nation was preparing for a new revolution ; while at the same 
time the disasters which had befallen the French armies on the 
very ground on which he had achieved such uninterrupted tri- 
umphs had kept his name alive in the men's memories ; his friends 
could contrast Areola with Magnano, Rivoli with the day of the 
Trebbia; and even those, who believed that in similar circum- 
stances he would have fared no better than Macdonald or Moreau, 
could not venture to put their judgment in opposition to the 
popular feeling that the past misfortunes had been owing to his 
absence, and that his return alone would be sufiicient to restore 
victory to the standards of the republic. 

The only persons who regretted to see him again were the 
directors, and they did not dare to show their displeasure. To 
remove him from the capital they at once ofiered him another 
command, which he at once refused, and for a few days he lived 
in great retirement. He had made the directors a fine speech, 
and had volunteered one or two oaths to preserve the republic ; 



A.D. 1799.] INTEIGUES OF NAPOLEON. 513 

but in private lie affected to speak of himself as of one whose 
health was impaired by his past fatigues, and who required rest. 
And he even exchanged his uniform for the dress of the members 
of the Institute, a body of literary and scientific men among whom 
he had been admitted before his departure for Egypt. Meanwhile, 
his political friends were busily intriguing with both soldiei's and 
politicians, and daily winning over fresh adherents to their pro- 
jected revolution. On the original institution of the directory 
two legislative councils had been established, known as the Five 
Hundred, a sort of imitation of our House of Commons, and 
the Ancients, so named because no one under forty years of age 
could be a member. And it was greatly in favour of the plots 
now forming that one of the general's brothers, Lucien Buona- 
parte, was president of the council of Five Hundred when the 
day of the struggle came. Our space forbids our dwelling on the 
steps taken by the conspirators to ensure success ; and, indeed, it 
is only the result that is important to our story. Before the 
appointed day Buonaparte found it necessary to take some of the 
directors into his counsels ; and his ablest partisan, Talleyrand, 
who had long since thrown off the priest's robes which so little 
became him, had won over Si^yes and Roger-Ducos by the promise 
of a share in the spoil, though Si^yes was in his heart so little 
friendly to Buonaparte that he had openly spoken of the propriety 
of shooting him for the desertion of the Egyptian army ; and 
though he was conscious that his alliance was only sought as that 
of a tool, to be discarded as soon as it could be dispensed with. 
On the ninth of November the arrangements were concluded. 
A series of decrees transferred the sittings of the two assemblies 
to St.-Cloud, and invested Buonaparte with the command of the 
Parisian division of the national guard, and of the guard of the 
assembly. Sieyes and Ducos resigned their seats in the directory, 
and Barras was temfied into following their example : their acts 
dissolving the existing government, so that at daybreak on the 
tenth the only thing to be done was to form a new one; and it 
was already arranged what that should be. 

It seemed as if nothing could be done in France without some 
intermixture of comedy ; and, accordingly, when the assemblies 
met, on the morning of the tenth, the only means of defence 
which the party opposed to the designs of the conspirators could 
imagine was to spend the greater part of the day in administering 
to every member an oath to maintain the existing constitution, 
a proceeding which occupied so much time that before it was 
concluded the soldiers who were to overturn that constitution 
were already at the doors. We have already seen that the French 
Revolution in many scenes strikingly resembles the English Rebel- 



514 MODEHN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1799. 

lion against Charles ; and few of the parallels are closer than that 
which is presented by the conduct of Cromwell when, in 1653, he 
expelled the Rump Parliament, as a preliminary to declaring him- 
self president of the council of state ; Cromwell reproached the 
members with a violation of their duties to their constituents : 
Buonaparte brought the very same charge against the Ancients. 
* They had violated the constitution/ he declared, ' in Fructidor, in 
Floreal, and in Prairial ; ' and if Cromwell declared that * the Lord 
had done with them, and had chosen other instruments, for carry- 
ing on his work,' ^ Buonaparte advanced a similar claim to the 
protection of the deities whom alone he worshipped, bidding the 
members recollect, ' that he was going forward, accompanied by 
the God of Fortune and the God of War.' ^ The French assembly 
made more resistance than had been oft'ered by the Rump, but 
the end was the same. The loudest orators were no match for 
Murat and his grenadiers. The hall "was soon cleared ; and in the 
evening Lucien collected a small section of the council of Five 
Hundred, who rapidly passed resolutions that Buonaparte and his 
lieutenants had deserved well of their country, and that the govern- 
ment should in future be administered by three consuls : Buona- 
parte, Sieves, and Ducos. At midnight the arrangement was 
ratified, by the council of Ancients; Buonaparte and his new 
colleagues took oaths of ' inviolable fidelity to the new constitu- 
tion, and to the principles of legality, liberty, and the represen- 
tative system.' And thus the curtain fell on another act of the 
Revolution. 

Buonaparte was now, at thirty-one, absolute master of France. 
For even amid the first excitement of success his nominal col- 
leagues did not deceive themselves as to their own position in the 
government. Buonaparte, as Sieyes truly said, was the master : 
' he meant to do everything ; he knew how to do everything ; 
and he had power to do everything.' He allowed his colleagues, 
indeed, to amuse themselves with framing a constitution, which 
should be a wholesome and efficient restraint on the consular 
power ; and Sieyes, who was wont to boast that he had mastered 
the whole science of politics, devised an elaborate system, with a 
senate, a legislative body, and a tribunate whose mode of ap- 
pointment was as complicated as their duties. But we need not 
waste time in discussing the power and character of bodies which 
were created on purpose to have neither power nor character, but, 
solely to serve as screens to conceal the concentration of the whole 
authority of the state in a single hand ; especially as the nation 
itself desired no such screen, but regarded the recent changes witli 

• Hume, c. 60. ^ Lanfrey, i. 469. 



A.D. 1799.] ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CONSULATE. 515 

indifference, if not with something like approbation. The general 
feeling was a weariness of the ceaseless agitation and continual 
changes of the last five years, and a disposition to welcome any 
arrangement which held out a hope of tranquillity and stability. 
And so stable was the new government, that the substitution of 
two new consuls, Cambaceres and Lebrun for Sieyes and Ducos, 
which took place before the end of the year, made no difiierence in 
the opinion of anyone. It was even a greater proof of its stability, 
or, at least, of the confidence of Buonaparte himself in the general 
favour with which it was regarded, that one of his first measures in 
the new year was to take possession of the Tuileries, the palace of 
the ancient kings, from which all the republican emblems and 
inscriptions with which it had been disfigured since the king's 
murder had been carefully effaced, and to which he now removed 
with great pomp, accompanied by the other consuls, drawn by six 
white horses, and escorted by a splendid body-guard, under the 
command of the most distinguished generals ; and he was no 
sooner installed there than he began to revive the custom and 
parade of the royal court 5 the titles of chamberlains, equerries, 
and pages ; well estimating the fondness of the French people for 
show and splendour, and confident that the interest that this 
reproduction of old fashions would excite would draw off the 
attention of the people in general from graver measures of his 
government, to which he did not wish them to pay too great 
attention. 

Not that in all matters he despised public opinion. On the con- 
trary, though from the first he resolved that not one of his ministers 
should be supreme in his own department, but that they should 
practically be nothing more than so many clerks to carry out 
his designs, and to execute his orders, he chose them with great 
care from the diflerent parties which had hitherto divided the 
state, so that each should feel itself represented in the cabinet. 
Talleyrand became foreign minister; Fouche, in spite of the 
infamy attached to his name as the author of the massacres of 
Lyons, was minister of police. And the First Consul's comment on 
these appointments sufficiently reveals their object. ' What revo- 
lutionist,' said he to his brother Joseph, ' will not have confidence 
in an order of things when Fouche is a minister ? What man of 
birth will not hope to find life endurable under the former Bishop 
of Autun ? The one guards my right, the other my left ; I open 
up a highway that everyone can use.' In another way also he 
studied to conciliate public feeling, though, as the wish of the 
people in general was opposed to his own, it required some skill 
to secure his own object, while seemingly endeavouring to obtain 
theirs. The people were eager for peace ; he desired a continuance 



516 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1800. 

of the war : and resolved at the same time to secure this end, 
and to gratify the nation, by offering peace to the sovereigns who 
were armed against France, but offering it in such a manner as 
to ensure the rejection of his proposals. He wrote letters with 
his own hand to the King of England, and to the Emperor of 
Germany; knowing well that in England, his letter would be 
regarded as irregular in form, since the discussion of such points 
belongs not to the king, but to one of his ministers ; and pro- 
posing terms to the Emperor which, after the last campaign, there 
was no chance of his accepting. He received, as he had hoped, 
unfavorable answers from both countries ; and, judging that 
the people were sufficiently conciliated by his apparent attempt to 
carry out their wishes, and were also gratified in their feelings of 
vanity, by seeing the new magistrate of their choice write, as if on 
equal terms, to the ancient sovereigns of Europe, he eagerly pre- 
pared for a new campaign, against the Empire, both in Germany 
and Italy. He was not, however, without his difficulties. The 
consulate was established for only ,a limited number of years; 
and his place at its head was so clearly due to his military renown, 
that he feared being supplanted if any other general should achieve 
still greater triumphs. It was necessary, therefore, in his view, 
not only that the Austrians should be defeated, but that he himself 
should strike the heaviest and most decisive blow: and to one 
more scrupulous, or less audacious, it would have been no trifling 
hindrance that the constitution regarded the consuls as civil 
magistrates, and forbade their taking on themselves any military 
command. But as no law which stood in the way of his own 
aggrandisement was now regarded by him as an obstacle, he 
resolved to trample on this one: paying just so much deference 
to it as to call the force which was to be under his own guidance 
the army of reserve. The army of Germany, on the Danube, was 
entrusted to Moreau : that of Italy to Massena ; while the com- 
mand of the reserve of 60,000 men was nominally given to General 
Berthier, lately minister of war, and excellent as a staff officer, 
but of a capacity only suited to the discharge of secondary duties. 
But at the end of the second week in May, Buonaparte joined this 
army himself at Lausanne ; and at once led it across the Great 
St. Bernard into the plains of Piedmont. The weather was so 
favorable that a single week sufficed for the passage of the whole 
army ; and, on the twenty-first, Melas, who had received no intelli- 
gence of even the existence of this third army, learnt to his 
astonishment that it was encamped in force in what might almost 
be called his immediate neighbourhood. With great promptitude 
he called in various detachments, for his army was greatly 
scattered, and stood upon his defence. For the initiative was in 



A.I). 1800.] OPERATIONS IN PIEDMONT. 517 

the power of the French, and the brave old Austrian was forced 
to wait till the invader's plan of attack should be developed. 

For Buonaparte had the choice of several lines of operation. 
He might at once descend upon Turin, and force Melas to an imme- 
diate battle ; or he might turn to the south to relieve Massena, 
who with 16,000 men had for above a month been cooped up in 
Genoa, blockaded on the side of the sea by an English fleet, on 
the side of the land by General Ott, with a powerful Austrian 
division, and who was known to be in such distress for want of 
supplies that, imless he were relieved, it was certain that he must 
speedily surrender. But neither of these plans promised a triumph 
which the First Consul desired should be both decisive and showy. 
Moreau had already gained such advantages over the Austrian 
General Kray in Germany, as to prevent all danger of that officer 
being able to aid Melas ; and had even obeyed the order which had 
been sent him by Buonaparte, jealous lest one whom he regarded 
as his rival should be too successful, to send one of his divisions 
to reinforce the army in Piedmont. But though Kray could not 
join Melas, it was possible that Melas, if defeated in a battle which 
should result from a march upon Turin, might fall back and unite 
with Kray. And far greater advantages were to be obtained by 
first cutting him oft' from that line of retreat, and not bringing 
him to action till the French had gained such a position that the 
Austrians, if defeated, should be unable to extricate themselves. 
With this design Buonaparte decided on marching first towards 
Milan, tlius placing himself on the line between the army of 
Melas and Germany ; while his own retreat, in case of disaster, 
would be secured by his command of the roads to the St, Gothard 
passes of the Alps. It was true that, by this plan of the campaign, 
Massena would be left to his fete ; and, in fact, at the beginning of 
June he was compelled to capitulate, having lost half his army by 
actual famine in little more than six weeks ; but Buonaparte had 
no objection that other generals should seem unfortunate, in order 
that his own triumphs might be rendered the more brilliant by the 
contrast. He was admirably seconded by the zeal, and ability 6f 
his lieutenants, by the skill with which Lannes seized and occu- 
pied Pavia, and the vigour with which Murat, though his peculiar 
talent as a leader of cavalry was not yet discovered, made him- 
self master of Piacenza. Besides the sacrifice of Massena's army 
which it involved, the soundest military critics have found much to 
object to in the plan itself, as one accompanied with unnecessary risk 
from the great extension of the line of operations which it neces- 
sitated, though, on the first arrival of the French army on the 
Italian side of the Alps, the Austrian army was so scattered that 
it might easily have been destroyed in detail. And it seems plain 



518 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1800. 

that it did allow Melas time to concentrate his army solely for the 
sake of the effect to be produced by its defeat as a whole : while 
the same object might have been obtained more safely by the 
march upon Turin. Indeed, the event itself proves that the plan 
needlessly imperilled the success of the campaign, for it was a 
mere accident that changed the battle which ensued from a 
defeat into a victory. But those who most condemn the plan 
itself admit that nothing could be more admirable than the strate- 
gical skill with which it was executed. 

There was no Austrian force to oppose Buonaparte's advance to 
Milan, and in that city he remained several days fully occupied with 
political and military arrangements, and waiting for more precise 
information as to the position of Melaa, which he never received. 
At last, on the twelfth of June, believing him to be retreating 
towards Genoa, in order to keep open his communications with 
the English fleet, he himself quitted Milan 5 the next day, he 
reached the gates of Alexandria ; found to his surprise that that 
strong fortress was the head-quarters of the enemy ; and passing 
on a mile or two to the southward, encamped for the night around 
the little village of Marengo ; feeling little doubt that the know- 
ledge of his arrival would at once compel Melas to a retreat. But 
Melas was not only skilful, but resolute ; though he believed the 
French army to be stronger than his own, which in truth it was 
not, he conceived that that very circumstance made it safer to 
attack it and to endeavour to open a passage by force to Piacenza, 
than to retreat before it ; and the next morning saw his whole 
force moving upon Marengo. 

Important as the battle which ensued proved to be, it was, like 
those of the campaign of 1797, on but a comparatively small scale. 
The two armies were very nearly equal in number, neither of 
them much if at all exceeding 30,000 men. What difference did 
exist was in the cavalry and artillery, and in both those points the 
Austrian was the stronger. Marshal Marmont has recorded in his 
Memoirs an opinion that Buonaparte had but little tactical skill, 
accounting for his deficiency in that point by the fact of his never 
having had the command of a battalion or a brigade, but having 
been promoted at once from the rank of a captain to that of 
commander-in-chief ; and it is certain that, however admirable 
his strategy before the battle, in his handling of his troops in the 
actual fight he showed no superiority to his adversary. Melas 
concentrated his first attack on Marengo itself, as the key of the 
French position, and carried it after a fearfid carnage. Exulting 
in their success, the Austrians pressed on gallantly. Victor was 
driven back in great disorder on the left. In another quarter Lannes 
met with an equal check, and, though giving ground more slowly, 



4..D. 1800.] THE BATTLE OF MAEEIilGO. 519 

suffered heavy loss from the terrible fire of the Austrian batteries. 
Buonaparte in person brought up a strong column to his support, 
but found himself utterly unable to arrest the steady advance of 
the Himgarian infantry. Square after square of the French was 
broken. Buonaparte began to make up his mind to retreat ; and 
Melas himself, exhausted with his exertions under an Italian sun, 
and believing the battle won, retired to Alessandria to rest himself, 
as a veteran nearly eighty years of age might well be excused from 
doing. But the night before, Desaix, one of the ablest of the 
officers who had been left in Egypt, had arrived from Toulon at 
Marengo, and Buonaparte had given him the command of a division, 
with which about four o'clock he reached the field ; and the arrival 
of the fresh division and his own eagerness for combat, decided 
Buonaparte to make one more effort for victory. Yet for a moment 
it seemed as if the attempt had only aggravated the disasters of the 
day. Leading on his column against a large body of Austrian infantry, 
under General Zach, to whom Melas had left the task of completing 
the victory, Desaix was shot through the heart. Dismayed by 
his loss, the French wavered. Zach pressed them with increased 
vigour ,• when the whole fortune of the day was suddenly changed 
by the presence of mind of Kellermann, whose vigour had won 
the victory of Valmy in the first year of the war. lie had under 
his orders a stout division of 800 horse, which had hardly been 
engaged, and which was watching the events of the battle while 
posted in a vineyard high enough to conceal his troopers from 
sight. Zach passed the cavalry without seeing it ; as he pressed 
on, and the moment that his flank was exposed by his advance, 
Kellermann, with happy promptitude, fell upon it. The effect 
was instantaneous and decisive. The Austrians, amazed at find- 
ing an enemy whom they had never seen on their flank, and some- 
what disordered by the rapidity of their own advance, were 
struck with a sudden panic. They wavered, broke, and fled. 
Zach himself and 2,000 of his men were taken prisoners. The 
other French divisions, which had been beaten, recovered heart, 
and returned to the charge ; and when Melas, whom the news of this 
change of fortune had brought back, returned to the field, nothing 
was left him to do but to rally his broken troops and secure a safe 
retreat for the main body. 

The battle had been won by the merest accident, to which 
Buonaparte was as far as possible from having contributed. But 
the results of the victory vindicated, or seemed to vindicate, his 
scheme of the campaign, since Melas found his retreat so entirely 
cut off" that he had no resource but to agree to an armistice, by 
which he surrendered a large district and a great number of the 
strongest fortresses to the conqueror. It was in Buonaparte's 



520 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1800. 

power to have imposed even harder terms ; but he was politic ia 
his moderation ; he hoped to make the armistice a means of 
separating the Empire from Britain, and to conclude a final peace 
with the Emperor before Moreau should have an opportunity 
of earning fresh laurels. Jealousy of competitors in military 
glory was a weakness from which he was never free; and it 
was often remarked by those who knew him best that he never 
forgave Kellermann for having won Marengo, as the unanimous 
voice of the army declared that he had, after the battle had 
been more than once lost. Peace with the Empire did not, how- 
ever, follow at once. The Emperor had recently entered into a 
fresh treaty with England, which bound him to continue the war ; 
but at the beginning of winter his armies received from Moreau 
at Hohenlinden a still more- crushing defeat than that of Marengo; 
and two months afterwards a treaty was concluded at Luneville, 
on nearly the same terms as had been agreed on at Campo-Formio. 
England showed itself equally ready to terminate the war ; and 
though negotiations with her government were more protracted, 
peace with England also was signed at Amiens in the spiing of 1802; 
and Buonaparte was left at leisure to take what steps he might 
desire for the consolidation or extension of his power. 

He had much to do : for if France had latterly been tranquil, 
its tranquillity did not as yet proceed from any definite principle 
of obedience to established authority and law ; nor indeed could 
even the consular authority be regarded as firmly established while 
its chief was engaged in violating the very constitution to which 
it owed its existence. But the peace of Luneville left him at 
liberty to organise a system of government ; and with his usual 
preference of his personal interests to every other consideration, 
he determined that the first step should be the continuance of his 
own power. Kellermann, conscious of the value of his own 
services, when coldly praised in the evening of Marengo for his 
'good charge,' had rejoined that 'the First Consul had reason to 
be pleased, for it had placed the crown upon his head.' And 
perhaps Buonaparte's own opinion did not greatly difiier from his ; 
but he said that the time was not come, and for the present re- 
solved to content himself with a prolongation of his authority for 
ten years, and a power of naming his successor. He had tools 
ready to make a motion to that efi^ect in the senate. The senate 
was far too obsequious to demur at agreeing to it. An address 
was voted and presented, requesting him to sanction the change ; 
and he himself, with superfluous hypocrisy, expressed his willing- 
ness to sacrifice his own wishes for an early relief from his labours 
to the welfare of the nation, if the people itself judged it desirable 
to impose such a burden on him. 



&.D. 1802.] THE CODE NAPOLEON. 521 

But, as soon as lie had thus established his own authority on a 
permanent footing, (for the subsequent prolongation of the consul- 
ate for his entire life, and the exchange of the title of First Consul 
for that of Emperor, which was not long in following it, were but 
inevitable developments of the measure now adopted, and added 
nothing to the stability nor to the extent of his power), he 
applied himself to strengthen its foundations by a general reform 
of the legislation and administration, which should not only give 
the government itself a solid foundation, but should inspire the 
nation itself with confidence in that solidity. It was a work for 
which he had already shown himself to be well qualified, by the 
extreme capacity for organisation and administration which he 
had displayed in Egypt, where, scanty as was the leisure which he 
could bestow on such objects, he had done much for the material 
improvement of the country. And it was one which he professed 
to be in especial accordance with his own natural taste, more than 
once declaring that in the eyes of posterity his fame would depend 
on his civil labours far more than on the most brilliant of his 
victories. He now exhibited all his characteristic energy in its 
prosecution ; and at the same time the practical character of his 
genius. He had a profound contempt ^ for those hazy metaphy- 
sics which would found legislation on abstract principles, instead 
of adapting the laws to the lessons of history and the characters 
of men. It was to such theorists, ideologists as he named them, 
doctrinaires as they are often called now, that he rightly attri- 
buted the chief part of the miseries that had afflicted and dis- 
graced the country. They were not yet extinguished, but he was 
resolved to put an end to their influence. He appointed a com- 
mission to reduce the laws into one plain and intelligible code : a 
measure in no country more necessary than in France, where the 
variety of practice recognised by the different provincial parlia- 
ments had produced more than ordinary confusion. The com- 
missioners consisted chiefly of lawyers of the highest reputation ; 
and it is a remarkable proof of his resolution that the work should 
be well done that the one to whom he allowed the greatest influ- 
ence was Tronchet, though he had been one of the counsel of 
Louis XVI. on his trial. Not that he trusted the final settlement 
of any point to the lawyers any more than he entrusted the chief 
regulation of any department to its ostensible head : he himselt 
acted as president of the commission ; attended nearly all its meet- 

1 ' C'est a la ideologie, a eette tene- humain et aux legons d'histoire, qu'il 

breuse metaphysique qui, en reclier- font attribuer tons les malheurs qu'a 

chant avec subtilite les causes pre- e'prouvea notre belle France.' — His 

miferes, veut sur res bases fonder la le'- reply to the address of the Council of 

gislation des peuples, au lieu d'appro- State. — Correspondance, vol. 24, No. 

prier les lois h la conuaissance du coeur 19,390, dated December 20, 1812. 



522 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1802. 

ings, and took an active part in every discussion, in which he often 
showed as thorough an acquaintance with the principles of general 
jurisprudence and the working of particular laws as was possessed 
by those who had devoted their lives to the study of their pro- 
fession. Yet, absolute as he was, he was often willing to yield 
his opinion to theirs in matters in which he did not conceive his 
personal authority as ruler of the nation to be concerned. On 
these points he was inflexible. The constitution of the year VIII, 
as it was called, had already laid the foundation of one general 
system of centralisation which is incompatible with liberty, and 
which, in so many subsequent revolutions, has made France the 
prize of the party which has been master of Paris ; and many of 
the new laws were carefully framed with a view to the extension 
of that system. The press, too, was placed under the most severe 
restrictions. Some limitations of freedom of speech and writing 
may almost be regarded as one of the inevitable consequences of 
his position, for tyranny is unavoidably jealous ; but no despot had 
ever carried his interference to the lengths which he afterwards 
permitted himself as Emperor, when he made the journals of the 
day instruments, not for communicating news to the people, but 
for keeping it from them ; ordering them- to look on ' any intelli- 
gence that was disagreeable or unfavorable to France as an in- 
vention of England,' and to punish that country for its perverse 
ingenuity by ' constant attacks on her fashions, customs, literature, 
and constitution.' ^ By such regulations as these he was tarnishing 
the fame which he hoped to establish as a legislator, and con- 
descending to become ridiculous. As an administrator, his merits 
are liable to less deduction ; he greatly extended the internal 
communications of the country; he introduced sanitary regula- 
tions, and compelled attention to them. He founded chambers of 
commerce, of agriculture, and schools in which the scholars were 
maintained at the expense of the state, though even here he could 
not be entirely magnanimous, nor entirely lay aside his fear of 
conspiracies against his authority ; and, accordingly, one funda- 
mental rule was that no pupil was to be admitted ' whose family 
was not attached to the principles of the Revolution.' 

But the greatest civil service which at this time he rendered, 
as it was the greatest which he could possibly have rendered to 
the nation, was the formal abolition of the • Jacobin profession of 
infidelity, and the re-establishment of Christianity as the religion 
of the state ; though, in the measures which he took for this object, 
he stained his fame with an act of petty dishonesty which it would 

1 See some of his letters to Fouche, 1805, when he -was preparing for the 
in the Napoleon Correspondence, invasion of this kingdom, 
especially those in May and June 



A.D. 1802.J THE CONCOEDAT. 52*3 

be hard to parallel by any act of the most corrupt ministers of the 
old monarchy. His own conduct towards the Pope had been 
strangely inconsistent, varying with the views which at diifer- 
ent times he took of his own interest. In his first Italian cam- 
paign, when his object was to reconcile the directory to his 
disregard of their wishes by the magnitude of his acquisitions, he 
had sent a division into Central Italy to overrun the States of the 
Church, and had not only stripped the Pontiff of nearly all his 
territories beyond the walls of Rome, but had compelled him to 
pay a contribution of many millions of francs, and a hundred of 
his finest pictures, not concealing from the directory his expecta- 
tion that the ' old machine,' as he called the Romish Church, when 
denuded of its temporal power, ' would tumble to pieces of itself.' 
But after Marengo, he began to conceive the idea of reviving the 
Empire of Charlemagne. He related, in one of his bulletins, that 
he had been publicly received by the civil and ecclesiastical 
authorities of Milan in the great cathedral, 'on a dais upon which 
the consuls and first magistrates of the West were usually re- 
ceived.' And as the Pope seemed to be an useful instrument in 
carrying out such a purpose, he began to retrace his steps, and to 
seek to conciliate the goodwill of Pius VII., who had just suc- 
ceeded to the triple crown, by promises which cost him, and were 
likely to cost him nothing, since no one could compel him to fulfil 
them. 

Pius, a devout and sincere man, little suspecting that one so 
powerful should have need to stoop to craft and treachery, or that 
the First Consul's design was simply to use him as a tool for his 
own pm-poses, and that he would be equally prepared to receive 
him as a guest, or to drag him from his palace as a prisoner, re- 
ceived his advances gladly. And thus the way was already 
smoothed when, in the spring of 1801, Buonaparte proposed the 
establishment of a Concordat by which the future relations of the 
Gallican Church to the Papacy should be detormined. Even 
while making this proposal he did not affect to conceal from those 
in his confidence his ovm perfect indifference to religion. He 
looked upon a religion of some kind as -a serviceable instrument of 
a government, so indispensable indeed, that, to use his own words, 
* if the Pope had not already existed, he should have been created 
on purpose ; ' but for himself he declared that he believed in no 
particular creed : but that, as he had been a Mahometan in Egypt, 
where the worship of Allah -was established, so in France he would 
be a Catholic, because that had been the religion of the French 
when they had acknowledged one. And he was so far from de- 
siring to encourage any feelings of devotion, that he added, with 
reference to Jenner's great discovery, that was just at that time 



524 MODEEN HISTOKY. [a.d. 1802, 

attracting the general notice of scientific men, that he was vac- 
cinating the people with religion, to make them take it lightly ; 
and that in fifty years it would be almost worn out in France. To 
accelerate the negotiation, Pius sent his secretary of state, the Car- 
dinal Consalvi, to Paris ; but the conclusion of the arrangements 
was not in every case as easy as the Holy Father had expected. 
Buonaparte's own brother Joseph and the Abbe Bernier were the 
French commissioners, though their power was but nominal, for 
every point of importance was submitted to the First Consul: who 
required the insertion in the treaty of many clauses to which the 
cardinal could not in his conscience consent. Consalvi, however, 
had not only eminent diplomatic skill, but firmness also ; as hia 
biographer describes him, he was half a churchman and half a 
man of the world : and, by making concessions on points which he 
did not consider essential, he induced Joseph and his colleague to 
meet him on others, the most important of which were, in his 
opinion, those articles which secured absolute freedom for the 
Church, and the right of celebrating its ordinances in public. At 
last everything was amicably settled': and a day was fixed for the 
formal signature of the treaty, the conclusion of which was to be 
announced at a banquet to be given by Napoleon in honour of the 
event : when, at the last moment, Consalvi learnt, to his amaze- 
ment and indignation, that it was designed to cheat him out of the 
concessions which had been made to him, though deliberately 
agreed to by the First Consul's brother, and sanctioned by the 
First Consul himself j and that for that object the mighty framer 
of the Code Napoleon could descend to a fraud for which his own 
code would have sent one of his subjects to the galleys. Two 
copies of the treaty had been made from the original draft, one 
by the Italian, the other by the French clerks but when Consalvi 
took the pen in his hand to sign the French copy, he perceived 
that it was widely different from that made by his clerks and de- 
signed to be retained by himself. Buonaparte had actually ordered 
his clerks, not only to omit from his copy all the articles which he 
had himself consented to abandon, or to modify, but even to insert 
others which were so offensive and inadmissible that his commis- 
sioners had not even ventured to propose them. It is hard to say 
whether the temper of the diplomatist was more severely tried by 
the discovery of so base a trick, or his firmness by the necessity of 
defeating it. But he had yielded all that his duty to his Church 
would permit ; on what remained he was immoveable : and Buona- 
parte himself could hardly dare to allow the treaty to be broken 
off by tricks of his own, which, if known, would indispose any 
other sovereign to negotiate with him. Finally, the Concordat was 
signed ; and the re-establishment of religion was celebrated by a 



4..D. 1802.] THE CONCORDAT. 525 

public ceremony in Notre-Dame, wticli was attended by all the 
constituted authorities, the foreign ambassadors, and a mag- 
nificent staff; though not without exciting great dissatisfac- 
tion among those who still adhered to what they called the 
principles of the Revolution, a dissatisfaction which they did 
not care to conceal from the First Consul himself. 'What 
thought you of the ceremony ? ' said he to General Delmas, 
while the last notes of the organ were resounding in the great his- 
torical cathedral which had been so long closed. ' It was a fine 
piece of mummery,' replied the surly republican ; ' nothing was 
wanting but the million of men who have perished to destroy 
what you have now re-established.' He, like many more, regarded 
the re-opening of the church as a prelude to the restoration of 
the throne. And Buonaparte had, perhaps, no objection to its 
being so considered ; though Delmas's frankness was punished by 
banishment. 



526 MODEEN HISTOKY. [a.d. 1802. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 
A.D. 1802. 

BUONAPARTE never made a speecli in wliicli tliere was less 
sincerity than when he professed a desire to rest his fame on 
the arts of peace, rather than on his achievements in war. On 
the contrary, he only concluded the peace of Amiens in order to 
make preparations for renewing war on a more extensive scale 
than ever. Conquest was his one absorbing idea : and, before the 
end of the year in which the treaty was signed, a series of encroach- 
ments on the liberties of neighbouring states showed how insati- 
able was his appetite for a further extension of the influence 
and dominion of France. The establishment of Republics in other 
countries had been a favourite object with the revolutionists : a 
Batavian Republic had been substituted for the old government 
of Holland : a similar constitution, with the name of the Hel- 
vetian Republic, had been given to Switzerland ; he himself had 
constructed a Cis-Alpine Republic in the north of Italy, out of 
some of the old duchies ; and in the recent treaties of peace, the 
independence of these and other republics had been formally 
guaranteed. But Buonaparte was as fully imbued as Louis XIV. 
with the idea of the invalidity of all such obligations. And the 
treaty of Amiens had hardly been signed when one French 
ambassador was sent into Holland to compel the Dutch authorities 
to alter their constitution so as to assimilate it to that now 
established in France ; and, when, though the magistrates at the 
Hague were obsequious enough, the Dutch chambers proved 
refractory, a body of French troops aided the authorities to dis- 
solve them ; and the new constitution was imposed by main force 
on the indignant people. The next month a similar revolution 
was eff'ected in Switzerland ; at the same time (a step of far 
greater significance, as a proof of a design again to attack Austria), 
the whole of Piedmont was formally annexed to France ; while 
General Sebastiani, an officer of great ability, was sent to Egypt 
to make a fresh examination of that country, and ostentatious 
publicity was given to his report, which scarcely concealed a re- 
commendation to renew the invasion of 1798. And all these 



A.D, 1803.] EENEWAL OF WAE. 527 

circumstances combined left so little doubt on the First Consul's 
resolution to renew the war, that the English ministry considered 
themselves justified in refusing to carry out one of the clauses of 
the recent treaty, which bound them to evacuate Malta as soon 
as one or two preliminary arrangements had been completed, 
Malta was of no value to France, except as facilitating an attack 
upon Egypt; but Buonaparte's anger at its retention was alone 
sufficient to show how greatly his mind was set on a resumption 
of that enterprise ; and, after complaining in unusually bitter terms 
of the bad faith of the British government, and openly insulting the 
British ambassador, in the spring of 1803, he once more went to 
war on that ground alone. And it is too characteristic of that 
extreme enmity to England, which, as his correspondence shows, 
he had conceived even before he had ever been opposed to an 
English force, and also of that disposition to set himself above 
all law, of which he gave so melancholy a specimen in the follow- 
ing year, that he took upon himself to aggravate the horrors of 
war in a manner absolutely unprecedented, and opposed to the 
usage of every civilised nation, by issuing an order, the moment 
that war was declared, to arrest every Englishman, who for 
pleasure or business happened to be in France at the time. Above 
10,000 persons, chiefly of course of the wealthier classes of society, 
were at once seized, and detained as prisoners till the end of the 
war. His own officers, and especially Junot, on whom, as governor 
of Paris, the duty of making the greater number of the arrests 
devolved, remonstrated so earnestly against the measure, as to 
provoke no slight expression of his displeasure, and even threats. 
But no remonstrances could ever move Buonaparte from any 
course on which he had resolved. He admitted its injustice, but 
declared that the more flagrant that injustice was the more 
it answered his purpose. He wished, it may be supposed, as he 
said, in another case a year later, to show the world of what he 
was capable if his demands were rejected; but the demonstration 
produced not terror, but indignation : the ministers of every country 
protested against it, and few of his acts contributed more to excite 
against him the lasting feeling of distrust,' if we may not say 
hatred, with which he was regarded in foreign countries, and 
which contributed so greatly to his eventual fall. 

At first, till Pitt's diplomatic skill had procured him allies on 
the Continent, the war gave him personally but little employment, 
since England as yet limited her efforts to naval operations. It 
might have been well for his fame had it been otherwise ; as if he 
had been personally engaged in the conduct of a campaign, he 
might have found no time for an action which, in the general 
estimation, has left a deeper stain on his memory than even the 



528 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1804. 

massacre of Jaft'a ; and which seems so utterly without an object, 
that historians have been driven to impute it to the most far- 
fetched motives ; and one shrewd critic of his actions, Madame de 
Stael, expresses her belief that, being resolved to assume the 
crown, he thought it requisite, on the one hand, to inspire with 
confidence the revolutionary party, and to relieve them from any 
fear of the return of the Bourbons, and, on the other hand, to prove 
to the royalists that in attaching themselves to him they were 
irretrievably breaking with the ancient dynasty, For, at the be- 
ginning of 1804, he resolved to exchange the title of consul for 
life for that of sovereign, choosing the title of Emperor rather than 
ting, because in old times it had been borne by Charlemagne. 
And again he found the legislative bodies and the people obsequi- 
ous to his will, and docile enough to solicit his acceptance of a 
rank which had not been heard of in France for a thousand years, 
as indispensable for the safety of the state. 

Yet even when thus on the point of attaining his proudest wish, 
he was anxious and alarmed. He suspected both royalists and 
republicans of conspiracies against him; and he determined to 
strike terror into both, though his first victim could not be 
reached without a flagrant violation of the law of nations. The 
Duke d'Enghien, son of the Duke de Bourbon, and heir of the 
glories of the house of Conde, was residing at this time at Etten- 
heim, in the Duchy of Baden, spending his time chiefly in hunting, 
and altogether removed from plots and plotters. He had been 
warned of the danger of remaining so near the frontier even by 
Talleyrand, who, seared as his conscience was, was too astute a 
politician not to dread his masters embarrassing himself by what 
others, equally callous^ described as 'worse than a crime, a blunder ; ' 
and he was preparing to retreat to a safer distance, when, in the 
middle of March, a body of gensd'armes crossed the frontier, seized 
him, and carried him off to Paris. It was the evening of the 
twentieth when he reached Vincennes ; before midnight he was 
brought before a court-martial to go through the mockery of a 
trial, on the charges of having borne arms against the Ilepublic, of 
having offered his services to the English government, of having 
put himself at the head of an army of emigrants, and of having 
engaged in conspiracies against the life of the First Consul ; some 
of which were notoriously false, and not one of which was at- 
tempted to be proved. Indeed, nothing whatever was attempted 
to be proved, for not a single witness was examined ; and nothing 
could be disproved, for he was not allowed the aid of comisel, nor 
a moment's delay to procure evidence of his innocence. He was 
found guilty, condemned, hurried at once downstairs into the 
courtyard, where his grave had been dug even before his arrival, 



A.1). 180i.] DEATH OF THE DUKE D'ENGHIEN. 529 

and shot by a file of grenadiers before he had been twelve hours 
at Vincennes. 

It is needless to spend a single word in commenting on so un- 
paralleled an atrocity. And he was not the only victim. Not 
that Napoleon was cruel, like Robespierre and Danton, loving 
bloodshed for its own sake, but he was profoundly indifferent to 
human life, or to any consideration, but to that of the best way of 
securing his power, and careless whether he reigned by love or 
fear, so long as he reigned in undisputed and unassailed power ; 
and he expected to secure his own safety by letting people, as he 
said himself, * see of what he was capable ' to revenge himself on 
his enemies. The death of the duke was his warning to the 
royalists. He desired to read a similar lesson to the republicans ; 
and to prevent any sympathy being felt for them by mixing up 
their case with that of avowed partisans of the exiled royal family. 
And for his victims from that party he selected two generals 
of the very highest reputation and popularity. For among his 
meanest weaknesses was a constant jealousy of those who had 
made themselves a name in war without any connection with, 
or dependence on himself. He had shown this feeling in the 
very first days of the consulate when, in a list of men whom he 
designed to banish to Guiana, for no offence except that, as he 
suspected, they disapproved of the violent dissolution of the former 
government, he included the name of General Jourdan, the gallant 
officer whose victory over the Austrians at Fleurus, in 1794, had 
retrieved the credit of the French army after a campaign of gTeat 
reverses under other generals. The indignation of all Paris had 
compelled him to recall the proscription of one so popular ,• but he 
now proceeded to strike down men whose deeds and reputation 
greatly exceeded Jourdan's. Of all the commanders in the first 
years of the war Pichegru had done the greatest service to the 
Republic. His were the operations which, in 1794, drove the 
English to evacuate Holland, expelled the Stadtholder, and en- 
abled the democratic party to revolutionise the whole country. 
Moreau's exploits had been still more brilliant ; indeed, his victory 
of Ilohenlinden was the greatest achievement of a French army 
since the days of Sa.xe. But as neither of these generals owed 
anything to the Emperor, he regarded them with suspicion, 
and arrested them on the charge of being accomplices with a 
body of royalist nobles in the design of replacing the Bourbons on 
the throne, refusing them a trial by jury, and personally canvassing 
the judges to procure an adverse sentence. That a royalist con- 
spiracy was in agitation was notorious ; indeed, the head of the 
party, Georges Cadoudal, a Breton noble, who was seized at the 

same time, admitted, if we may not say boasted, of his intentions. 
24 



530 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1804. 

But it was equally certain that Moreau was far from sharing 
them ; and though Pichegru, who, after the revolution of Fruc- 
tidor, had been treated with the most ungrateful injustice by the 
directory and banished, had since that time undoubtedly been in 
occasional communication with the roj'alists, not a shadow of 
evidence could be discovered of his complicity in this particular 
plot ; while in the preliminary examinations to which he was sub- 
jected, he avowed his determination of exposing the artiKces by 
which Fouche and the police had endeavoured to seduce him and 
others to offences against the state, in order afterwards to make a 
merit of detecting them. The government was not inclined to 
run the risk of such disclosures, and before the day fixed for the 
trial the conqueror of Holland was found strangled in his bed. 
An attempt was made to attribute his death to his own hands, but 
the circumstances disproved the possibility of suicide; and all the 
world perceived that the act could only have been perpetrated either 
by the express order of the Emperor or by those in his confidence, 
who felt sure of his approval.^ The evidence of Pichegru, an 
old comrade and friend, it was well known would have established 
the innocence of Moreau beyond all dispute ; and now that he was 
removed, the Empei-or renewed his endeavours to induce the 
judges to convict and condemn him. At a later period, he declared 
to Bourrienne, his secretary, that he had never intended to allow 
the capital sentence to be executed, but that he should have been 
contented to feel that the mere fact of the general's condemnation 
prevented him from being any longer dangerous, while the possi- 
bility of the sentence being carried into effect would, as it were, 
have bound over the whole republican party to good behaviour. 
But the judges, who could not divine what was in his mind, and 
who perhaps would have felt no certainty of his adhering to his 
merciful intentions, had too great a regard for their own characters 
to comply ; and all that his solicitations, which went to the very 
verge of compulsion, could procure was a sentence of detention 
for two years, of which the grounds were not stated with preci- 
sion, and which was received by all Paris with ridicule. Emperor 
as he was, he doubted whether it would be safe to keep one so 
popular in imprisonment, and Fouche consequently was employed 

1 It is curiously characteristic of murder- either, or as he more cleli- 

the general unscrupulousness of those cately phrases it, 'to cause either to 

in high office, both under the Con- disappear by extraordinary means,' , 

sulate and the Empire, that Savary, he would certainly have preferred 

who, in his llemoires labours dili- getting rid of Moreau (^Mcmoires 

gently to exculpate his master from du Due de Rov'iyo, ii. 85) ; and Las 

any share in tlie death of Pichegru, Cases represents Buonaparte himself 

adduces as one of his strongest ar- as having used the same argument 

guraents that, if he had -vvishcd to at St. Helena. 



A.D. 1804.] THE POPE VISITS PAEIS. 531 

to work on Madame Moreau's fears, lest her husband should meet 
the fate of Pichegru, and then to offer a commutation of the sen- 
tence to one of banishment to America, which she prladly accepted, 
and to which, not without difficulty, she prevailed on her less 
nervous husband also to submit. 

It was while these events were tahing place that the Imperial 
dignity was conferred on the First Consul, not by the legislative 
body alone, but by the whole nation, whose votes were taken on 
the question, and which, by a majority of above three millions and 
a half^ ratified the act of the senate. It must be admitted that he 
was guilty of no usurpation, but that he ascended the throne by 
an act as legitimate as that to which our own sovereigns owed 
their title ; and he was resolved to give his accession a sanc- 
tion which no monarch of France had received since the days 
of Charlemagne, and which even that great prince had obtained, 
not at Paris, but at Home, and to be crowned by the Pope him- 
self in Notre-Dame. There were difficulties of no slight mag- 
nitude in the way. Many of the members of his own council 
of state remonstrated vehemently, on the ground that such an act 
seemed to involve not only a renewal of the old connection between 
the Church and the State, but the subordination of the civil to the 
ecclesiastical authority, while the councillors of Pius raised still 
more practical objections, fearing that Austria might take um- 
brage at so unparalleled a condescension as a visit of the Pope to 
a foreign metropolis to inaugurate a new dynasty ; or that the 
new Emperor might take advantage of his Holiness thus placing 
himself in his power to extort a renunciation of those conditions 
of the Concordat to which he was known not to have consented 
without great reluctance. 

However, the obstacles on both sides were soon removed. 
Buonaparte himself cut the French objectors short with the asser- 
tion that all Europe would regard the Pope's visit to Paris as a 
great moral triumph for France ; and, moreover, that it was his 
will : while Pius won over the dissentients at his court by the 
argument that he should be laying the new Emperor under obli- 
gations in which it was inconceivable that the Papacy should not 
find its account. But he greatly overrated the degree in which 
he with whom he had to deal, and whom for the future we must 
call by his imperial title of Napoleon, was accessible to gratitude. 
He had overcome the objections of his advisers by the peremptory 
assertion of his will ; but it seemed as if he designed to make them 
some recompense for the slight which he had put upon their 
councils by marked discourtesy to the Pope himself When the 
negotiations were concluded, and it had been ascertained that his 
invitation lo his Holiness to visit Paris would be accepted, it was 



532 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1804. 

sent, not, according to tlie usage invariably observed by all Roman 
Catholic sovereigns in tbeir communications with the Holy See, by 
a dignified ecclesiastic, but by a rude soldier. He compelled him 
to hasten his departure from Rome, and to quicken his speed on 
the journey, so that, as his secretary complains, the poor old man 
travelled more like a courier than a great prince. He received 
him, on his arrival at Fontainebleau, -with no state ceremonial, 
but on horseback, at the head of a pack of hounds. He even 
took every opportunity of -withholding from his visitor the ordi- 
nary courtesy due to a guest; v^heu they drove out together 
sometimes entering the carriage before him; sometimes, in the 
spirit of what General Rapp, his aide-de-camp, called, ' a singular 
comedy,' having both the carriage doors opened at the same time 
that tliey might get in together, and generally appropriating the 
seat of honour ; and, finally, in the ceremony itself, he would not 
allow Pius to crown him, though he had brought him from Rome 
on purpose, but snatched the crown from his hands, placed it on 
his head with his own hands, as he afterwards crowned Josephine. 

The ceremony was as gorgeous as had ever been witnessed in 
the days of the old monarchy : for a court had already been 
created ; titles had been restored ; Napoleon's brothers and sisters 
had received imperial rank ; the most distinguished commanders 
had been made marshals; and those dukes and princes, and 
members of the old nobility who had survived the Jacobin pro- 
scriptions, and still remained in France, were studiously invited to 
the Tuileries, those who came being received with such pointed 
favour as gradually won over a great majority of those who had 
not emigrated ; many even of those who had been most resolute 
in their loyalty to the old race not being able to resist the honor- 
able and valuable appointments ofiered to them under the new 
Empire. To carry out still further his resemblance to the great 
Emperor of the West, in the spring of the next year, he assumed 
the title of King of Italy ; and crossed the Alps to receive, at 
Milan, the iron crown which had pressed the brows of Charle- 
magne himself; but which, as at Paris, he would sufi'er no hand 
but his own to place on his head. And, because under the 
Romans the eagle had been the standard under which the legions 
had won the victories which enabled the first Caesars to turn the 
republic into an empire, he now with great pomp distributed 
eagles to difterent regiments of his own army as their ensigns, and - 
with his own voice exhorted the soldiers to swear to carry them 
constantly forward on the path of victory. 

The opportunity for fresh triumphs was at hand. The diplo- 
matic skill of Pitt had secured the alliance of Austria and Russia ; 
the great English minister having been materially helped in his 



A.D. 1805.] PLAN FOE THE INVASION OE ENGLAND. 533 

negotiations by the indignation whicli the Emperors of both coun- 
tries felt at the insult offered to every sovereign in Europe by the 
seizure of the Uuke d'Enghien on foreign territory, and his subse- 
quent execution ; and though Napoleon did not originally design 
to make those countries the objects of his first attack, before the 
end of the year he had been compelled to alter his intention. The 
negotiations of England with the continental monarchs had not 
escaped his notice ; but he had hoped to crush her before her new 
allies could be ready to take the field ; and at the beginning of 
the year had revived the old plan of Philip II. and the Duke of 
Parma to bring into the Channel such a fleet as should give him, 
if only for a week, the command of the sea, and under its escort 
to convey to the Kentish coast an army which he made no doubt 
the whole power of these islands would be unable to resist. 
But a plan which rested on the hope of French crews proving a 
match for English sailors was hopeless from the beginning, though 
France had never sent forth braver or abler admirals than those 
to whose skill he trusted for carrying it out. His finest fleet was 
checked in July by Sir Robert Calder, was destroyed in October 
by Nelson, and from that day all idea of invading England was 
for ever laid aside by even his audacious spirit. 

But no event in his history displays to more brilliant advan- 
tage his extraordinary genius for war. One Austrian army was 
assembled in the valley of the Danube, and above 100,000 Russians 
were marching through Poland to unite with it : other armies 
were forming in other districts, in the Tyrol, and in Italy, suffici- 
ent, if time were given them, to overwhelm the greatest force 
which France could assemble. But Napoleon saw the possibility 
that out of the very abandonment of his enterprise against 
England he might find means of striking a fatal blow at her allies 
before they were ready to receive it. He at once prepared 
to transfer the army under his own command, and the other 
very strong divisions which had been occupying Flolland and 
Hanover, to the Danube ; appointing every column its march with 
such an admirable nicety of skill that they all arrived at their 
destined points almost at the very moment that he had directed j 
and in the last week in September he himself arrived at Stras- 
burg to take the command. So secret had been his operations 
that the Aulic council, believing him to be still occupied on the 
coast, had a few weeks before directed the invasion of Bavaria, in 
the hope of inducing the elector and some others of the lesser 
German princes to join the alliance; with inconceivable folly 
trusting the command to Mack, the general who, 'seven years 
before, had so mismanaged a review at Naples, that Nelson, who 
was present, declared that he did not understand his business, and 



534 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1805. 

who, a few weeks afterwards, had fully justified the opinion of 
that greatest of sailors, aggravating his incapacity hy conduct 
which bore the appearance of treachery also. To defeat such a 
commander was nc5 hard task ; and Napoleon, by a series of skilful 
manoeuvres, so completely surrounded him at Ulm, that, after 
losing nearly half his army in actions on a small scale against 
Nej, Murat, Soult, and others of the Emperor's lieutenants, he 
concluded a shameful capitulation for the other half, surrendering 
30,000 men and 60 guns, the day before Nelson annihilated Ville- 
neuve's fleet at Trafalgar. 

Napoleon did not intermit for a moment that celerity of move- 
ment to which he had owed so many of his earlier triumphs, but 
pressed across Bavaria with the utmost speed, designing to march 
down the Danube to Vienna, for the defence of which the Austrian 
government now began to collect all its forces, recalling the 
Archduke Charles from Italy, the Archduke John from Vienna; 
bringing up fresh levies from Hungary and the southern provinces 
of the Empire ; and hoping, almost against hope, that the Russian 
army, which was advancing through Poland, would arrive in time to 
unite with its own generals for the preservation of the capital. 
They had not even the satisfaction of striking a single blow in its 
defence. KutusofF, the commander of the Russian advanced guard, 
did, indeed, gain a trifling advantage over Mortier, the commander 
of one of the French divisions : but no Austrian general was able 
to interpose a single brigade between the advancing enemy and 
Vienna ; and, on the twelfth of November, only three weeks after 
Mack's surrender at Ulm, the Emperor Francis was compelled to 
quit the city, to retire to Presburg, and to send an envoy to make 
such terms for his capital as the conqueror would grant. Napoleon 
was never moderate in the hour of victory. He demanded an 
enormous contribution in money, with the instant cession of the 
Tyrol and Venice, which he had so lately given to Austria, as the 
price of even an armistice ; concessions which no sovereign who, 
like Francis, had 300,000 men in arms, could make without dis- 
honour. And, as the conditions were refused, he at once occu- 
pied Vienna : got possession, by treachery, of the bridge over the 
Danube, which the Austrian engineers had prepared to destroy, 
and, sending a strong division across the river in pursuit of Kutu- 
soff, who was now forced to retreat, make great exertions to over- 
take and crush that oflicer before he could effect his junction with 
the main Russian army, which was known to have reached the 
frontier of Moravia. But Kutusoff was a pupil of Souvarof, full of 
resources, and dauntless in resolution, and made so gallant a stand 
with his rearguard that, though he could not save one column 
from being made prisoners, he conducted the rest of his force for 



4.D. 1805.] THE EUSSIANS ADVANCE TO AUSTEELITZ. 535 

safety to Wischau, in Moravia, where, on tlie nineteenth of 
November, they joined their comrades, under the command of the 
Czar. 

The concentration of this army might have been the commence- 
ment of a new campaign, in which the allies would have had every 
chance of retrieving the disasters of the last six weeks. For Alexander 
was now at the head of a well-appointed army of 75,000 men : and 
though for the moment he was outnumbered by the French under 
Napoleon, who lay between him and the Danube, the Austrian 
archdukes were both hastening to join him with forces which, 
when united with his own, would constitute an army greatly ex- 
ceeding in numerical strength any that the. French Emperor could 
possibly bring against him. The Prussians, also, had a large army 
in Silesia ready for instant service, which was sure to join him 
soon, as indeed their king, Frederic IV., had formally undertaken 
that it should, though, with the habitual perfidy of that govern- 
ment, it was for the present detained in uncertainty, waiting to 
see whether circumstances would render it safe or dangerous to 
keep its sovereign's engagements. Every consideration, both poli- 
tical and military, recommended that the Russians should wait 
for the reinforcements which a brief delay must bring them. 
And, as their position was so strong that it could not be attacked 
with advantage, the choice of the time for active operations was 
entirely in their power. Unluckily, Alexander had neither the 
sagacity of a statesman nor the judgment of a general: he was a 
vain man, easily led to adopt whatever measures might seem cal- 
culated to enhance his own consequence : and, in opposition to the 
advice of the most experienced veterans, he allowed himself to be 
guided by those who assured him that Napoleon had not 40,000 
men with him, and to decide on attacking him with his own un- 
assisted forces. A few days were of necessity allowed for the 
army to rest to refresh itself after its long and toilsome march. 
And in the last days of November the order was given to march 
towards the enemy. Napoleon's head-quarters had for some days 
been established at Brunn, a strongly fortified town of some mag- 
nitude a few miles to the south-west of Wischau j and at a small 
distance from Brunn, lay a village called Austerlitz ; where the 
character of the ground, varied by hills on one side, by lakes and 
marshes on another, seemed to the practised eye of Napoleon so 
well suited to the object which he had in view, of inflicting on the 
Russians a defeat which should be decisive of the contest, that 
some days before, while reconnoitring the country around, he had 
announced to his staff that that should be his battle-field. The 
Russians now hastened to enable him to fulfil his prediction, and 
to accomplish his object. 



536 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1805. 

They had begun their advance on the twenty-seventh ,• the 
moment that their design was made clear Ly their movements, 
Napoleon called in all his outlying detachments, which eagerly 
obeyed a summons to battle ; so that by the night of the first of 
December, 80,000 men were assembled rmder his banner. And 
all that day the Russian columns bad been seen coming up in 
manifest readiness for immediate action. Their line of march had 
even revealed their plan. Weyrothen, the chief of his staff, had 
not only persuaded the Czar five days before that Napoleon's 
numbers onlj' equalled the half of his own, but had induced him 
now to determine on operations based on the idea that he had 
received no reinforcements since that day. Before morn on the 
first, the Russian columns were seen by Napoleon moving across 
his position, with the evident intention of turning his right flank, 
so has to cut him oflT from Vienna : and, imable to conceal bis 
deligbt at such a blunder, for a flank movement in front of an 
enemy is one of the most hazardous operations in war, he at once 
announced to those around him that before the next night, that 
army would be his own. The detail? of a battle are rarely inte- 
resting, or even intelligible to any but soldiers. It is sufficient to 
say here that Napoleon on this day displayed more than his usual 
skill ; the error committed by the enemy being the very same 
which afterwards ruined Marmont's army at Salamanca, and which, 
more perliaps than any other blunder affords a prompt and vigo- 
rous enemy an opportunity for delivering a dazzling and decisive 
stroke. He allowed the Russians full time to commit themselves 
unmistakeably to their false movement ; be even drew back some 
of his own regiments on the quarter menaced by their advance, so 
as to facilitate it, and lure them on further ; and then, when they 
could no longer draw back, he fell on them like lightning on the 
point which their manoeuvre had necessarily left most vulnerable, 
and whicb was also that where a blow would be most vital ; he 
pierced their centre ; isolated the left advancing wing from the 
rest of the army : and the moment that that object was attained, 
the victory was in fact won, however resolutely the Russians might 
strive to retrieve the day. Struggle they did long, and stoutly : 
their ablest commanders, Kutusoft', and Langei'on, the neglect of 
whose advice had led to the dis.aster, did all that skill could devise 
or courage dare ; but nothing could save an army cut in two by 
the establishment of the enemy in strength in the centre of its 
position. It was no longer an army that was fighting a battle ; 
but isolated brigades that were struggling against overwhelming 
odds : the different French marshals combining their attacks against 
the Russian centre; right, and left, in turns, till, in spite of the most 



A.D. 1806.] THE BATTLE OF AUSTERLITZ. 537 

stubborn gallantry, all -were broken. Numbers were slain, still 
more were taken prisoners ; one division had a singular, but horrible 
fate. It sought safety by crossing a frozen lake, but the French 
artillery broke the ice, and above 2,000 men were drowned. 
Napoleon had gained what he desired, a victory which was in- 
deed decisive. Langeron said, ' that he had seen many battles 
lost, but that he could not have formed an idea of such a defeat.' 
The Russians killed and wounded exceeded 10,000 ; nearly twice 
that number were taken prisoners ; 180 guns were also taken. 
And the Emperor Francis, seeing clearly that such a defeat of his 
ally had placed his own armies at the mercy of the conqueror, 
who had already possession of his capital, had no resource but to 
make peace on such terms as the conqueror should dictate. 

Napoleon had not learned generosity from pr5sperity, and the 
conditions which he imposed were of unprecedented severity : he 
not only exacted an enormous contribution in money ; but he 
stripped the Empire of such extensive territories, and separated 
so many states from the Imperial jurisdiction, that Francis pre- 
sently executed a formal deed, renouncing the title of Emperor of 
Germany, and taking in its. stead that of Emperor of Austria. 
And, with a disregard for all the recognised rights of sovereigns 
and nations, for which no act of the most lawless conqueror 
afforded precedent, on the ground that the King of Naples, who 
was Francis's brother-in-law, had meditated joining the con- 
fedei-acy against France, Napoleon also issued a public proclama- 
tion, declaring that ' the dynasty of Naples had ceased to reign ; ' 
sent one of his marshals with a sufficient force to expel the 
king from his dominions ; and presently, by his own authority, 
conferred the vacant kingdom on his own brother Joseph. lie 
had already raised the electors of Bavaria and Wurtemburg to 
the rank of kings, augmenting their territories at the expense of 
Austria. And he now took no pains to conceal, if indeed it may 
not be said that he took pains to parade his resolution to make 
himself absolute master of the policy of every state on the 
Continent. 

He was not, however, at peace. Indeed, his reign was through- 
out one of uninterrupted war, of which our space must forbid us 
to mention more than a few of the most striking incidents. It 
was also for some years one of almost uninterinipted conquest, 
though not one of quite unvaried victory, even when he himself 
commanded his army. But though Austerlitz had compelled 
Austria to submission, it had not extorted peace from Russia : and 
the Czar, whose best quality was fortitude under disaster, was re- 
solved to adhere to his understanding with the Kinpf of Prussia : 



538 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1806. 

and doubted not that the united force of the two nations would 
Btill be sufficient to defeat any attempt of the conqueror to extend 
his encroachments on that side of Europe. 

But Frederic IV. was fully imbued with the infamous maxim 
which his predecessor, Frederic the Great, had not scrupled to 
announce, that considerations of honour were not arguments to be 
addressed to kings, who should regard nothing but their own in- 
terests. He conceived the idea that, by making an alliance with 
Napoleon he could gain more than by keeping his agreement with 
the Czar : and he was not deterred by the reflection that the gain 
which he coveted was to be made at the expense of another sove- 
reign, who was both an ally and a relation. Accordingly, the 
moment that he heard the result of Austerlitz, he renounced his 
former policy, and made a treaty with Napoleon, who gave him 
Hanover, the price which he desired, and while giving it did not 
conceal his contempt for his perfidy. Indeed Frederic, like the 
other kings who owed their promotion or aggrandisement to the 
French conqueror, soon learnt that his title of king was not re- 
garded as conferring on him any freedom of action. He was 
ordered to close the ports of his new territory against English 
vessels, a measure which at once ruined the Prussian commerce. 
A month or two afterwards some districts on the Rhine were torn 
from his dominion to augment the Grand-Duchy of Berg, which 
had been allotted to Murat, Napoleon's brother-in-law : and while 
the impression made by these acts of insolent despotism was skil- 
fa]ly taken advantage of by the war party in Berlin, (for the 
majority of the Prussian nation was far from approving the base- 
ness of its sovereign) the seizure and execution of Palm, a Nurem- 
burg bookseller, for selling a pamphlet exhorting all Germans to 
resistance to French despotism, wrought up the excited feelings of 
the whole people to an irrepressible pitch of indignation. Palm 
owed no allegiance to Napoleon ; so that his execution was a law- 
less murder, an insult and a challenge to every independent sove- 
reign, and a foul wrong done to the whole German nation. The 
Prussian ministers themselves could no longer check the current 
of public feeling : and before the end of September (Palm was 
shot on the twenty-fifth of August) the Prussian ambassador was 
ordered to present at Paris a demand for the redress of various 
grievances in a tone which was of itself a declaration of war, and 
was regarded as such by Napoleon. 

Napoleon was always more ready for war than his enemies ; 
and accepted the challenge thus thrown down to him with eager- 
ness, well knowing that he had already a force in Germany avail- 
able for instant operations, which the whole power of Prussia 
could not equal. And he determined to give no lime for Russia 



A.D. 1807.] OVERTHROW OF PRUSSIA. 539 

to throw her s-word into the scale. In all his campaigns against 
the German nations, as well as in those beyond the Alps, nothing 
is more remarkable than the electric rapidity with which he dealt 
his blows and brought his wars to a conclusion. It was not till 
the twenty-sixth of September that he quitted Paris to take the 
command of his army. On the fourteenth of October the Prus- 
sian army was annihilated by two distinct defeats in the neigh- 
bouring fields of Jena and Auerstadt. And the vengeance which 
he took on the country far exceeded even the penalties which he 
had inflicted on Austria. His plan, from the beginning of his 
career as a commander-in-chief, had been to make war support 
war, or, in other words, to extort from the countries which were 
the scenes of his operations the means of supplying and rewarding 
his soldiers : and he never carried out that principle so fully as on 
this occasion. No army could be interposed to check his advance 
on Berlin ; and though that capital offered and could offer no 
resistance, it may almost be said that he sacked it, so prodigious 
were the contributions which he exacted from its citizens, not 
sparing even the tomb of Frederic the Great, but rifling it of its 
different relics, his scarf, sword, and the insignia of knighthood 
which he wore. Pie seemed to regard the king, and still m^re 
the queen, who had indeed been the head of the war party, as 
personal enemies ; and he refused to listen to any proposals of 
peace, but chose for a time to retain military occupation of the 
whole country. 

Russia had longer time for preparation, and at first made a 
stouter resistance ; indeed, in the great battle of Eylau, it was 
only the retreat of the Russian commander-in-chief that enabled 
Napoleon to claim a victory at all, for his loss of men was the 
greater of the two. But the perception which this battle forced 
upon him how well the stubborn resolution of the northern war- 
riors could counterbalance the dashing energy of his own troops, 
roused him to a display of even more than usual strategical skill ; 
and few combinations have ever been more brilliant than those 
by which before midsummer he so out-generalled the same ofiicer 
who had so stoutly resisted him at Eylau, that, though the Rus- 
sians were almost in their own country, (for Friedland and Eylau, 
though in east Prussia, are but a short distance within the frontier,) 
his force on the day of battle exceeded theii's by little less than 
half. But from Russia, though beaten, he exacted no contributions. 
None of his kinsmen or marshals coveted dominions or estates in 
that bleak territory ; and Alexander, vain, self-important, and 
weak, would be more serviceable to him nominally as an allj"-, 
really as a tool. The two sovereigns met at Tilsit, in the neigh- 
bourhood, a few days after the battle. Frederic of Prussia was 



540 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d, 1807. 

there also, but Alexander, lured by the prospect of self- aggran- 
disement which Napoleon cunningly held before his eyes, wholly 
neglected the interests of his ally, who, in the negotiations which 
ensued was scarcely allowed a voice, or the slightest influence. 

The two chief negotiators had one common bond of union, 
hatred of England. In Napoleon it was, as we have seen, one of 
his earliest feelings ; in the breast of Alexander it had been re- 
cently implanted by the feeling that he had not received from the 
government which had succeeded that of Pitt the aid to which he 
conceived himself entitled. They had a second, a thirst for in- 
crease of dominion. Alexander, though very devoid of his grand- 
mother's abilities, had inherited all her appetite for conquest ; and 
Napoleon gratified at once his vanity and his rapacity by seeming 
to treat him as the only sovereign fit to be his partner in the 
spoils of the world. Accordingly, imagining that the humilia- 
tion of Austria and Prussia had removed all obstacles from their 
path, the two Emperors proceeded to settle together a plan for 
the subjugation of the whole of the Continent to their will, little 
dreaming that, out of the very arrangements which they were 
now making with so much mutual goodwill were to spring the 
deadliest quarrels, the heaviest calamities .to both : the devastation 
of Russia, the burning of Moscow, the dethronement and exile of 
Napoleon himself. TJieir interests did not seem to clash. The 
territories which allured the Czar were in the north and east of 
Europe ; the kingdoms which Napoleon still coveted lay in the 
south and in the west, and he took good care to secure the lion's 
share. Alexander might take Finland, the fertile provinces on 
both sides of the mouth of the Danube, and extend his dominions 
to the Balkan ; but his ally was to have Malta, Greece, Candia, and 
Egypt for himself; Spain and Portugal for one of his brothers; while 
Ferdinand, the Bourbon king of Naples, was now to be expelled 
from Sicily also, which was to be added to Joseph's dominions, 
and was to be indemnified out of the spoils of Turkey, provided 
any district could be found for him which neither of the spoilers 
coveted for themselves. With the dominions of Britain, except 
Hanover, which in fact had never been anything but an encum- 
brance to her, they could not find any means of dealing while she 
continued mistress of the seas ; but every country hitherto neutral 
which had a single ship of war was to be forced into a con- 
federacj'' with the two great contracting powers, to wrest that 
• supremacy from her ; while her commerce was to be annihilated 
by a set of regulations as curious in their political economy as 
ridiculous in their impotence, by which all trade with her was 
prohibited, and the produce of her manufactories interdicted to 
the whole world. And her whole coast was declared in a state of 



A.D. 1810.] THE BEELIN DECEEES. 541 

blockade by a sovereign who, since Trafalgar, bad never ventured 
to send a single squadron to sea where there was any danger of an 
English one of half its numbers meeting it. 

How the cannon of Wellesley defeated the plan for appropriat- 
ing the Danish and Portuguese fleets ; and how the Berlin decrees, 
as the ordinances embodying these regulations were called, proved 
80 impracticable, that Napoleon himself was forced to sell licenses 
to evade them, we need not stop to relate. Unreasoning tyranny 
is not the less odious because its commands cannot be carried out, 
or because its malice often reacts upon itself. 

Another event which, even more than the Treaty of Tilsit, 
seemed at first to crown his wishes, and not only to establish his 
power but to give him a place among the old sovereigns of Europe, 
did in the end also contribute greatly to his fall by the ill-grounded 
confidence with which it inspired him. War again broke out 
between him and Austria, in which, though he sufiered one un- 
deniable defeat, on the stubbornly-contested field of Essling, he 
retrieved it at Wagram, which, though a drawn battle, if the 
numbers that fell on each side were alone to be considered, was 
invested with the character of a decisive victory by the inability 
of the Austrian commander, the Archduke Charles, to hold his 
ground afterwards, and by the degree in which his retreat again 
left his brother's dominions at the mercy of the conqueror. Na- 
poleon tried to conceal how little the battle had been in his favour 
by more than usual falsehood. Among the proofs of his innate 
littleness of mind was a habitual disregard of truth, which was 
nowhere more constantly shown than in the bulletins in which he 
announced to his subjects and to Europe the result of his military 
operations. No success was so brilliant as not, in his eyes, to 
require exaggeration. Failure was never confessed at all. He 
was so constitutionally false that he could not pay his people the 
compliment of believing them honest enough to appreciate truth, 
and he had never sufficient confidence in their loyalty to trust to 
it as a feeling which a single reverse might not undermine. He 
now proclaimed that he had taken 20,000 prisoners and forty 
guns ; though in fact his prisoners were but 2,000 wounded men, 
and were more than doubled in numbers by those of his own 
soldiers whom the archduke had captured ; and he had obtained no 
guns but one or two which were dismounted in the course of the 
fight. But the substantial reality of the victory was attested, 
not only by the vast exactions both in money and territory to 
which Austria was once more compelled to submit, but by the 
still more extraordinary sacrifice made by Francis when, before 
the end of the year, he consonted to Napoleon's marriage with his 
daughter 



542 MODEEN HISTORY. [a.d. 1803. 

Napoleon had been guilty of many acts of the most despotic and 
insolent tyranny, of some deeds of unprovoked deliberate cruelty, 
but perhaps of none which give a worse idea of his heart, or rather 
of his absolute heartlessness, of the callous selfishness which 
regarded neither obligations of gratitude, nor ties of affection, nor 
any consideration whatever, save those of what he fancied his 
interest, than that which we are now to describe. He was in- 
debted to his marriage with Josephine for that which was the 
source of all his subsequent greatness, the command of the army of 
Italy. She had now been his wife for twelve years, not only 
regarding his person with the most sincere aifection, his character 
and triumphs with the most fervent admiration, but greatly con- 
tributing to what may be called his social success, and to his 
popularity in his Empire, by the high-bred grace with which she 
presided over his court ; and, if she had at times pressed upon him 
unpalatable advice, her counsels had always been those of modera- 
tion, humanity, and virtue, of which he must more than once have 
repented the rejection. No one had ever been so entirely un- 
spoiled by unexpected prosperity. But she had borne him no 
children ; and, as all hope of her becoming a mother had now 
passed away, he compelled her to consent to a divorce which the 
legal authorities of France pronounced ; and, in the spring of 1810, 
married the young Austrian Archduchess Maria Louisa. 

That the Emperor Francis should have consented to give his 
child to one on whom he must have looked down as an adventurer, 
certainly argued a firm belief in the permanence of Napoleon's 
power and dynasty. And, apart from the humiliation which he 
must have felt in consenting to such a match on the score of birth, 
it is somewhat strange that he should have had no scruples on 
the grounds of religion ; for the divorce was not sanctioned by the 
Pope, to whom indeed the bridegroom could not possibly apply, 
since he was actually under sentence of excommunication. The 
Pope's condescension in visiting Paris had been so far from ob- 
taining for him, as he had hoped, the restitution of the provinces 
of which Napoleon had deprived him, that his return to Rome had 
been almost instantly followed by fresh aggressions. One year 
Ancona was occupied by the French troops. Another year Urbino 
and other provinces, which had hitherto been spared, were wrested 
from the Papacy, and annexed to the kingdom of Italy. Presently, 
the French collectors began to levy taxes in Rome itself j and the 
very week before the battle of Essling, the finishing stroke to all 
these aggressions had been given by a decree which annexed the 
whole of the territories remaining to the Papacy to the French 
Empire, and declared Rome itself an imperial and free city, while 
the tricolour flao: was hoisted on the walls of St, Ang-elo. 



6.D. 1809.] NAPOLEON SEIZES THE POPE. 543 

It was an unequal contest to which the Pope was challenged by 
this unprecedented usurpation. He could only use such weapons 
ns were left to him, the spiritual thunders of excommunication, 
which he at once fulminated against the French Emperor, and all 
concerned in the spoliation of the Church. Napoleon replied with 
arms, which, of course, were more effectual. His soldiers burst in 
the doors of the papal palace, and carried off the Pope himself and 
his new secretary of state. Cardinal Pacca, as prisoners. The 
cardinal was treated little better than any ordinary criminal, being 
kept in the state prison of Fenestrelles, in Savoy, for nearly four 
years. Pius himself was treated with somewhat less rigour, and 
was not put in actual confinement ; but was detained, and watched 
with a vigilance which prevented all possibility of escape, first at 
Savona, and afterwards at Fontainebleau, till the disasters of the 
Russian expedition, with the consequent multiplication of the ene- 
mies of France, led Napoleon to think it better to make a merit of 
setting him at liberty than to complicate the negotiations for peace 
with others for the release of so august a prisoner. Such treat- 
ment of one who, apart from his ecclesiastical rank and spiritual 
authority, was undoubtedly a sovereign prince, with whom Napo- 
leon had never for a single moment been at war, has no parallel in 
Christian history, except that which is afforded by the somewhat 
similar treatment experienced the year before by the king of 
Spain, which will be mentioned presently. It was another lawless 
outrage and insult to all sovereigns; and, though it throws no 
additional light on Napoleon's disregard of religion, since from the 
first, as we have seen, he professed the most absolute indifference 
to all such considerations, it is an irresistible proof of the feeling 
of helplessness to which Francis must have been reduced, when, in 
addition to discarding all the scruples of family pride, he could 
overlook the insults offered to the Holy See, whose especial 
champion he was constituted by his own imperial dignity. 

Napoleon now thought himself at the summit of glory, and 
secure in the permanent establishment of his authority. Yet at 
the time that he was achieving these triumphs of war and 
diplomacy on one side of his dominions, on the other side blows 
were being struck at his power which were one most influential 
cause, and, it may be said, the commencement of his eventual 
overthrow. If the first week of July saw him victorious at 
Wagram in the last week of the same mouth Marshal Victor was 
beaten at Talavera, in Spain. A British army established itself 
on the Continent, having in its passage of the Douro displayed a 
brilliancy of skill and vigour of enterprise, and in the stubborn 
fight which it had maintained victoriously on the Tagus against 
superior numbers, having borne itself with an unflinching indomit- 



544 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1808. 

aWe courage and tenacity, whicli were an omen of the fortune 
which attended it throughout six arduous campaigns. 

The "war in the Peninsula Napoleon had brought on himself, 
even more than any other, hy the wantonness of his grasping 
ambition. He had no cause of quarrel with Spain, nor indeed 
with Portugal; for Spain had been almost invariably an ally of 
France ; her fleet had shared with his the disaster of Trafalgar. 
And, though Portugal had in former times been connected with 
Britain, she was so no longer, but had submitted to all the de- 
mands which had been made on her in accordance with the Treaty 
of Tilsit, and had agreed to declare war against England. But her 
compliance availed her nothing. The King of Etruria, a puppet 
of Napoleon's own creation, was to give up his dominions as an 
addition to the kingdom of Italy, and was to be indemnified by a 
new sovereignty carved out of the northern provinces of Portugal. 
Another principality was to be constructed out of the southern 
states ; an imperious proclamation was issued declaring that the 
House of Braganza had ceased to reign ; an army, under Junot, 
invaded Portugal to carry it out; hopeless of resistance, the whole 
royal family of Portugal fled across the Atlantic to their Brazilian 
dominions ; and for a while the whole kingdom was in the powet 
of the French, who at once proceeded to levy contributions on it 
as much as if it had provoked their vengeance by the stoutest 
resistance. 

Harder treatment, if possible, was in store for Spain, Even 
while she was united to France in close alliance Napoleon had 
formed plans for dismembering her, offering some of her trans- 
atlantic settlements to Britain as the price of peace, and Majorca 
and Minorca to the Neapolitan Bourbons as a compensation for 
Sicily, which, as we have seen, was to be annexed to Joseph's 
kingdom of Naples. But now other arrangements were to be made 
for Naples, Kings and kingdoms were not only to be created at 
the pleasure of the great conqueror, but were to be transferred and 
shifted about in any way that might suit his convenience or caprice. 
In truth, he did not regard those to wliom he granted the title as 
kings in reality, they were but governors with the name of king; 
and the precept most earnestly inculcated upon them was that their 
first duty was to Napoleon himself, their duty to their people was 
to be second and secondary. Yet the rank, and the power which it 
conferred of enriching its possessors, was coveted by Napoleon's 
greedy kinsmen ; and, as Murat desired to exchange his grand-ducal 
coronet for a royal crown, Naples was assigned to him, and Joseph 
was to be removed to the more dignified throne which Louis XIV, 
had so exulted in securing for his own grandson. To obtain pos- 
session of Spain, however, was not so easy as to overrun Portugal, 



A.D. 1808.] THE WAR IN SPAIN. 545 

for iu every direction tlie country bristled with fortresses of almost 
impregnable strength, and more than one war had proved that the 
obstacles which nature had interposed to extended military opera- 
tions were not inferior to those of the engineer. But Napoleon 
was a man of many resources. Where force could not succeed, he 
could employ cunning ; by a series of complicated treacheries he 
not only obtained possession of some of the strongest fortresses, 
of Pampeluna, St, Sebastian, Barcelona, and others ; but he even 
persuaded the king, Charles IV., and his heir, Ferdinand, prince of 
Asturias, to cross the frontier in order to negotiate with him in 
person at Bayonne, and, as soon as they were in his power, he 
compelled Ferdinand to resign the crown which Charles had 
already abdicated in his favour; and sent him and his family into 
the interior of France, where they were detained for nearly six 
years in a sort of honorable confinement, carefully guarded ; and 
in June 1808 Joseph took possession of his new kingdom. 

At a later period Napoleon owned to his friends that his conn 
duct in Spain had been a great political blunder, had indeed been 
the cause of his ruin ; and he spoke truly. He had found it easy 
to expel one family of princes, and to kidnap another. But in 
both coimtries the people were not so easily cajoled or subdued. 
They rose in insurrection in the cause of their native princes. 
Britain, the only country over which Napoleon had gained no ad- 
vantage, at length saw in their resistance an opportunity of inter- 
fering with effect on the Continent, and, in the same week in 
which Joseph reached Madrid Sir Arthur Wellesley landed on the 
coast of Portugal, and, gaining two victories within a month, 
cleared the whole of that country for a time of the invader. The 
war thus begun lasted for nearly six years, the last blow beino- 
struck by the British general in the very same week in which the 
sceptre was wrested from him who had so wantonly provoked it : 
but, with the exception of one brief operation at the end of the 
first year, it was not carried on by Napoleon himself. Full of honest 
pride to every British heart must ever be the recollection of the 
unparalleled triumphs of his countrymen, whom no enemy could 
withstand either in the open field or the well armed fortress; till 
realising, in a sense far different from that in which it liad been 
uttered, the boast of Louis XIV. that there were no longer any 
Pyrenees, they forced their way into France itself, and illustrated 
their brief campaign in that country by fresh victories. But, as 
Napoleon was not personally engaged in the war, we must forbear 
to dwell upon those achievements here ; and must content our- 
selves with pointing out the righteous retribution which made the 
country which had been the scene of Napoleon's most wanton a"-- 
gression and foulest treacheiy, the scene also of his most unvarying 



546 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d, 180S. 

and most humiliating disasters : most unvarying, since Wellington's 
triumphant career was unchequered by a single mishap ; most 
humiliating, because his successes were achieved with far inferior 
forces to those of the French marshals, and could be attributed to 
nothing but the pre-eminent skill of the general himself, supported 
by the equally unsurpassed courage and discipline of his soldiers. 



k,v. 1810.] NAPOLEON AND THE CZAR. 547 



CHAPTER XXIV. 
A.D. 1810 — 1814. 

IN spite of Napoleon's great capacity and acuteness, he was 
singularly incapable of learning lessons or of taking warning : 
while so inveterate and boundless was his an-ogance that he was 
not in the least more careful to consult the feelings of his most 
powerful friends and allies, than of those princes whom he had 
most completely subjugated. He might be excused, perhaps, for 
looking not only on his brothers, but on sovereigns like those of 
Saxony and Bavaria, though nominally independent, as mere 
satellites of his will. But the Russian Czar was a potentate of a 
very different order. The extent of his territories ; the number of 
the people whom they supported, in both of which he far exceeded 
any other sovereign ; his military resources and the quality of his 
soldiers, of which Eylau had given evidence not to be forgotten, 
all pointed him out not only as a monarch whose alliance it was 
important to gain, but whose cordial friendship it was no unbe- 
coming condescension to seek to secure by uniform consideration and 
courtesy. Yet though the Peninsular campaigns of 1809 and 1810, 
on which the utmost efforts of Napoleon's most skilful and most 
trusted marshals had been constantly baffled and defeated, gave 
sufficient warning of the quality of the new antagonist whom he had 
brought on himself in that quarter ; the last month of 1610 witnessed 
the issue of a fresh edict which it was hardly possible for Alexander 
to regard in any other light than that of a combination of menaced 
hostility with personal insult. Napoleon had already driven his 
own brother Louis to resign the crown of Holland, and now on a 
pretext, of which his own decrees formed the most material part,^ 

1 The edict or senatus consultum, The Berlin and Milan Decrees were 

as given by Alison, c. Ixx. 30, states his own. The Orders in Council 

in its preamble that * the British were merely a reply to them, and 

Orders in Council, and the Berlin and these are alleged as the sole ground 

MilanDecreesfor 1806 and 1807, have for the annexation to France of a 

torn to shreds the public law of vast district, equal in extent to some 

Europe. A new order of things kingdoms, and containing a popula- 

reigns throughout the world. New tion of six millions, 
guarantees have become necessary.' 



548 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1812. 

he issued an edict incorporating in his own dominions the exten- 
sive and wealthy district which lies between the mouths of the 
Scheldt and Luheck, extending along more than 200 miles of 
coast, and enriched hy the labours of six millions of citizens : though 
among the territories thus appropriated was Oldenburg, whose 
Grand-Duke was brother-in-law to Alexander himself. He even 
threatened further encroachments at the expense of the Duke of 
Mecklenburg, whose eastern frontier was separated by scarcely 200 
miles from the western boundary of Russia ; and, because the Czar 
made a formal remonstrance against the spoliation of so near a 
connection as the Grand-Duke ; evinced almost equally uncon- 
cealed displeasure at the advance of the French frontier to a point 
so little distant from his own ; and, seeing no reason why he 
should injure himself to gratify an ally who showed so little con- 
sideration for his feelings, relaxed the observance of the Berlin de- 
crees which affected the commerce of his merchants with England, 
Napoleon at once declared war against him, and prepared to wage 
it on a scale which revealed his design to reduce Russia to as 
abject a condition as every other country on the Continent which 
had dared to resist his will. 

Alexander at first behaved with extraordinary pusillanimity. 
He humbled himself even Avith tears to the French ambassador, 
complaining of Napoleon's want of confidence in him and conceal- 
ment of his real wishes ; and protesting that he had no desire for 
commerce with England, which he conceived to be the greatest of 
all offences in Napoleon's eyes. But when he found war inevit- 
able, he redeemed his weakness by the promptitude and .extent of 
the preparations he made to encounter it, by the consummate and 
self-sacrificing prudence of his arrangements, and the courage and 
fortitude with which he sustained disasters. And, in truth, the 
contest which was now forced upon him was one which, if any 
other struggle had ever done so, called forth all the greatest qualities 
of warlike skill and moral virtue both in the ruler and the people. 
For the host which, in the summer of 1812, Napoleon led to the 
invasion of Russia Avas in numbers and equipment such as the 
world had never seen. He had not been contented with making 
unusual levies of troops in his own dominions. No country on the 
whole Continent which was under either his power or his influence 
was excused from furnishing its contingent. In the spring of 
1811 Maria Louisa had borne him a son, to whom he had given 
the title of king of Rome ; and the prospect of seeing his grandson 
hereafter seated on the French throne had induced the emperor 
Francis to enter with a cordiality which, under other circumstances, 
could not have been expected, into the war against his former ally. 
Prussia too, in spite of the cruel oppression which ever since Jena 
had desolated every part of the kingdom, was intimidated into 



A.D. 1812.] INVASION OF RUSSIA. 549 

concluding a defensive and offensive alliance witli her oppressor. 
And thus brigades from every part of Germany, as well as from 
Holland, from Italy, from Switzerland, from Poland, hastened to 
swell his ranks, till the whole army amounted to the unheard of 
number of 600,000 men, of whom nearly a sixth were cavalry ; and 
who were accompanied by a train of artillery of above 1,300 guns. 
The whole strength of the Russian empire could not have supplied 
so vast a force ; and the demands on the Czar's army for service 
in his distant provinces, garrisons, and other purposes did not leave 
300,000 men available for the conflict with the invader. 

Yet the vast preponderance of force at the disposal of Napoleon 
did not save him from the greatest disaster which ever befell 
the commander of an army, since a single ship, the sole relic 
of the host which he had led to Salamis, bore Xerxes back to 
the Hellespont.^ And though it is not always equitable to 
estimate the propriety of military operations by their result, the 
Russian expedition is one which may fairly be judged of in 
that manner, since a very few facts are sufficient to show that it 
could not possibly have had any other end, and since the causes 
which produced that end might have been as easily discerned by 
Napoleon who defied them, as they were. seen by Alexander who 
trusted to them. Napoleon attributed his losses not to the skill 
or valour of the enemy, but to the severity of the winter ; but 
that season in Russia is invariably inclement, if not intolerable, to 
all who are not habituated to its rigour : and the cold did not set in 
earlier than usual. Every one, whether Russian or French, could 
calculate on the weather. But what Napoleon failed to anticipate 
was the prudence and self-sacrificing heroism of those whose 
country he was invading, while they estimated with perfect 
soundness of judgment both the resources on which he relied and 
their own ability to deprive him of them. In Italy and Germany 
he had been wont to make war support war. He had ravaged 
every country through which his army passed with unsparing 
cruelty. He had fed his men on the crops, on the cattle ; and had 
compelled cities and towns to ransom themselves by vast contri- 
butions of supplies and money. Alexander felt that the present 
struggle was one for life and death : and therefore resolved that 
the invader should find no such resources in his country ; that 
he would sacrifice all but the nation itself to preserve the nation 
itself, however exhausted and impoverished, in independence. 

' Sed qualis rediit ; nempe unS, nave, cruentis 
Fluctibus, et tarda per densa cadavera prorS,. 

Juv. Sat. X. 185. 
A single ship the flying tyrant bore 
Through waves ^yiih corpses chok'tl, and red with gore. 



550 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1812. 

And, accordingly, the plan wliicli he formed for the campaign was 
to retreat steadily before the enemy, so as to draw him further and 
fm'ther into the interior : encountering him in occasional conflicts 
to prevent his own troops from becoming too much disheartened, 
but trusting as little as possible to chance for a success which even 
the vastness of the French host would contribute to ensure to him. 
And this design, judiciously conceived, was carried out with 
unflinching constancy. 

As the Russians retreated they cut down the crops on the line 
of the French advance, drove oft" the cattle, and even burnt Smo- 
lensko, and several other towns, rather than allow them to furnish 
shelter to the invader. The results of this policy were soon seen. 
Before Napoleon had crossed the Niemen a month he began to be 
straitened for supplies ; and when, on one or two occasions, the 
Russians halted to measure their strength with him in the open 
field, it was clearly seen that they had not degenerated from the 
stubborn valour of which they had given him one sufficient speci- 
men at Eylau, as they had not forgotten, though Friedland seemed 
to have effaced it from his recollection. • In those vast and level 
plains his superiority of strategical skill was thrown away ; and in 
not one of the actions which he fought during his onward march 
did he succeed in inflicting a greater loss on the enemy than he 
himself sustained ; though, faithful to the system of the campaign, 
after each conflict they steadily continued their retreat, knowing 
well that the further he advanced the more surely were they 
luring him on to his destruction. Even at Borodino, in which, as 
a battle deliberately engaged in with careful preparation on both 
sides, his acknowledged pre-eminence of genius might have been 
expected to decide the contest in his favour, he gained no advan- 
tage over his indomitable foes, after a slaughter which cost both 
armies more than one-third of their force, except the possession of 
Moscow, which proved only the most fatal of snares. Surely those 
who could thus sacrifice a city so honoured, so dear to the whole 
nation, deserved to conquer ; and before a people from whom such 
a loss could not extort a single concession, there was no alternative 
but to retreat. We may not impute it to Napoleon as a military 
error that he was too slow in acknowledging that necessity, though 
his delay in yielding to it was the chief cause of his subsequent 
misfortunes. He was looking at his position with the eye of a 
statesman and a judge of men rather thin as a soldier, and what 
he failed to estimate was the degree in which the conviction that 
in such a conflict there was but one means of safety had hardened 
and strengthened Alexander's character. The Czar was no longer 
the weak impulsive despot whom one defeat, and that not in his 
own country, had terrified into submission ; and who, more re- 



A.i>. 1812.] THE CZAR REFUSES TO TREAT. 551 

cently, had wept at the thought of a breach with a foreign sove- 
reign whom he had never seen but on a single occasion, who had 
never done him or his people a single service, and who in truth 
had no hold over him whatever but the influence of a strong over 
a weak mind. That weakness Napoleon flattered himself was 
unchanged. In one respect, in spite of the indecisive character of 
all the recent battles, he was justified in regarding himself as 
having gained a great advantage. A triumphant entry into the 
capital of Eussia had been alone wanting to make up the list of 
his triumphs, which included the reduction of the metropolis of 
every other country on the Continent of Europe, except Turkey. 
And, as his capture of Vienna and Berlin had led to the instant 
submission of Austria and Prussia, he made no doubt that his 
possession of Moscow would have a similar eifect on Russia ; and 
that, as before quitting Paris he had boasted that he would do, he 
should be able to dictate the terms of peace to the Czar in the 
Ki-emlin. He was not even undeceived when, in the very first 
week of his occupation of the city, he found that the Russians 
preferred burning it, as they had previously burnt many towns of 
inferior dignity, in preference to leaving it to shelter him and 
his army. But, as soon as the flames were extinguished, he re- 
turned, and took up his residence among the ruins, rejecting the 
advice and entreaties of his wisest and bravest counsellors, who 
in vain urged him not to delay to extricate himself and them from 
a country from which the weather would soon render escape 
impossible. He replied that a retreat would appear a flight ; that 
political considerations enjoined him to hold his ground ; that 'in 
politics one must never attempt to retrace one's steps ; that to con- 
fess an error brings discredit, while to persevere in it often makes 
it seem right.' ^ At last, when even he was forced to confess that 
no proposition was to be expected from Alexander, he consented 
to take the first step himself, and sent one of his aides-de-camp to 
St. Petersburg, confessing to him how indispensable peace had 
become, and bidding him make any sacrifice for it, save that of 
honour. '^ But Lauriston had no opportunity of displaying his 
diplomatic talents ; Alexander would not even receive him, but 
pretended to reprove his commander-in-chief, KutusofF, for granting 
an armistice, though but for a few days. But Kutusoft" was as 
crafty as he was brave, he knew how the prolonged stay in Moscow 
was demoralising and enfeebling the French, while his own army 
was daily acquiring strength by the influx of recruits, and the 
progress in discipline of all his fresh levies. And it was not long 

' Segur, liv. viii. c. x. in fin. paix ; il me faut la paix; je la veux 

* ' Les demieres paroles de I'Empe- absolument ; saiivez seulement I'hon- 
reur a Lauriston furent, " Jc veux la neur." ' — Segur, liv. viii. c. 9. 



552 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1812. 

before both these considerations forced themselves upon Napoleon 
also ; and on the ninth of October, even before, according to his 
most sanguine calculations, he could possibly have received the 
Czar's answer to his proposals, he quitted Moscow and began to 
retreat ; not for a moment disguising from himself the effect which 
8uch a movement would have upon the mind of Europe, but re- 
luctantly confessing that there was no alternative. He was too 
late : his army was no longer able to support the hardships of so 
long a march at such a season. And so strongly was this im- 
pressed on the mind of one of his officers, that Daru advised him 
rather to turn Moscow into an entrenched camp for the winter ; 
corn and salt, he said, could still be procured ; for meat they could 
kill and salt the horses ; and the return of spring would bring 
reinforcements, which would enable him still to complete the 
conquest of Russia. 

Napoleon could admire and appreciate what he justly called ' a 
lion's counsel,' but he dared not adopt it. He was, as he had said 
before, not only a general but an Emperor ; and he had to think of 
the effect which so prolonged an absence from Paris would have 
on the citizens. Who could tell what was already happening 
there, now that they had not heard of him for three weeks ; who 
could calculate the effect of their receiving no intelligence of him 
for six months ? France would never accustom herself to such an 
absence.^ It is instructive to see how little the great conqueror 
felt that he could trust to the loyalty of the people which, eight 
years before, had been almost unanimous in voting his election to 
the throne. And his distrust was justified ; for almost the first 
intelligence that reached him from Paris was that a conspiracy 
had been set on foot to overturn his authority, and that it was 
chiefly to accident that he was indebted for its failure. He 
adhered, therefore, to his own planj and, on the nineteenth of 
October, began his homeward march. 

But the very first day gave sad tokens of the disasters that 
awaited him. The officers remarked that the men ' dragged them- 
selves along rather than marched.' The exhaustion was even 
more conspicuous in the cavalry and artillery than in the infantry, 
and those were the very arms on the efficiency of which the safety 
of the rest might depend. A force in such a condition could not 
expect to reach the frontier without great losses, even if un- 
attacked ; and there was no chance of its being left unattacked. 
Kutusofl''s tactics were now completely changed. When the 
French were advancing it had been no part of his plan to-hinder 
their advance. Now it was his first object to cause as many 
delays as possible in their retreat ; since, if they could be detained 
' S^gur, liv. viii. c. is. 



A.D. 1812.] EETEEAT OF THE FRENCH, 553 

in the heart of the country till the snow should hegin to fall, the 
climate by itself would ensure their destruction. Cheering intel- 
ligence of disasters to the French in other countries had recently 
reached Russia. The expulsion of Joseph from Madrid had been 
the first fruits of Wellington's great victory at Salamanca. The 
salutes which Kutusoif now fired in honour of the achievement 
conveyed the intelligence to the French also ; while the great 
English general's success stimulated him to endeavour to deal the 
common enemy a blow of equal importance in the north of 
Europe. He would not even allow him to choose his own line 
of retreat ; for Napoleon had selected a road more to the south 
than that by which he had advanced, one which would have 
taken him by Kalouga, through a district not only fertile but 
unwasted. But Kutusoff barred his way, and after a fierce combat 
drove him back on the old Smolensko road ; and having thus 
confined him to a district which had been already thoroughly 
exhausted by his passage three months before, he gave the flying 
army no respite, but harassed it day after day with attacks on the 
flank and rear, inflicting such loss that before the snow began to 
fall Napoleon had lost nearly half the army with which he had 
left Moscow less than three weeks before. 

Now, indeed, the French army felt in their full severity of 
the horrors of war. The whole sky was enveloped in clouds, the 
ground in dense fogs, the snow jfell in sheets,^ as if, says the 
eloquent historian of the expedition, who himself bore his share of 
the miseries he describes, heaven itself was descending and joining 
itself to the earth and to their enemies, to complete their destruc- 
tion. Even fresh, vigorous, and well-fed men could not have 
endured the exposure to such weather; but the French were worn 
out by the fatigue of the campaign, and ill supplied. Every day 
men dropped on the road from actual hunger and weakness ; their 
comrades passed on unheeding, each expecting soon the same fate 
for himself. Every day numbers fell beneath the long lances of 
the Cossacks, who hung unwearied on their flanks ; no surgeons 
could be found to tend their wounds ; but on famished, and 
wounded, and sick, the snow fell thickly, till the intense frost 
terminated their agonies. They soon became not an army, but a 
rabble, preserving hardly a semblance of order, except when some 
attack on a larger scale than usual was made upon them. On 
such emergencies, their officers did for a moment succeed in 
restoring discipline, and in bringing them to confront the enemy 
with a momentary appearance of their fomier energy; but such 
spasmodic efforts could neither save their comrades nor themselves. 
Once Napoleon himself was almost taken prisoner. But his reso- 
' Segur, liv. ix. c. ii. 



554 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1812. 

lution was as undaunted as ever. All that courage and skill could 
effect in circumstances of such unparalleled hardship and danger 
was gallantly done ; and never was commander better seconded 
than he by the heroic exertions of his marshals, of his stepson 
Eugene, of Davoust, of Murat, of Victor, of Macdonald, and of 
Ney, who in this terrible retreat well earned the title his grateful 
master gave him, of the bravest of the bi'ave. 

But we will not dwell on such horrors. Those fared best who, 
like General Partonneaux and his division, found themselves so 
completely hemmed in that, though 7,000 in number, they had no 
alternative but to surrender. Those met the most cruel fate of all 
who, when almost within reach of the frontier, found themselves 
committed to a hopeless struggle with a new element. Full of 
resources as ever, Napoleon had outgeneralled the Russians, who 
had got before him to the Beresina, and flattered themselves that 
they had utterly cut off his retreat ; he had succeeded in throwing 
two bridges across the river, and, after a sanguinary conflict in 
which he lost 5,000 men, he seemed to have secured his passage ; 
but, though the leading battalions passed safely over, the renewed 
fire of the Russian batteries presently broke down and set fire to 
the bridges. The dense multitude that was on them as they gave 
way was precipitated into the stream. Thousands more in their 
despair, when they saw every hope of escape thus cut off, precipitated 
themselves into the stream in frantic attempts to swim to the 
opposite bank. More than 12,000 dead bodies were found in the 
river ; 16,000, whose retreat was cut off, yielded themselves un- 
resistingly pi-isoners ; and when, on the twelfth of December, the 
remainder reached the frontier, and crossed the Niemen by the 
bridge of Kowno, the whole number that thus reached a friendly 
territory did not amount to 20,000 men, destitute of artillery, 
destitute of baggage, destitute almost of food and clothes. From 
the condition of one great officer we may judge of the state of his 
comrades of inferior consideration. Count Matthieu Dumas, whom 
we have had occasion to mention in connection with some of the 
earlier scenes of the Revolution, had long before given in his 
adhesion to the imperial government ; and having borne an honor- 
able share in the toils of the expedition, had had the good fortune 
to escape unhurt, and to reach Kumbinnen, a town in East Prussia, 
where a friendly physician gave him quarters. He was sitting at 
breakfast when 'a man in a brown great-coat entered; he had a 
long beard, his face was blackened, and looked as if it were burnt, 
his eyes were red and brilliant. " At length I am here," says he ; 
" Why, General Dumas, do you not know me ? " " No ; who are 
you ? " "I am the rear-guard of the grand army. I have fired 
the last musket-shot on the bridge of Kowno : I have thrown into 



A.D. 1813.] NAPOLEON RETUKNS TO PARIS. 555 

the Niemen the last of our arms ; I have come hither through the 
woods. I am Marshal Ney." ' ^ 

It was not under the command of Napoleon himself that these 
miserable relics of the mightiest host ever assembled had crossed 
the Niemeu. The Kussiau pursuit had been relaxed after the 
disaster of the Beresina ; and, a week before the French reached 
Kowno, their Emperor had given up the command to Murat, and 
had hastened to Paris. He had been a true prophet when he 
rejected Daru's ' lion-counsel ' at Moscow. As has been already 
mentioned, a formidable conspiracy had been set on foot, it is 
believed by the remnant of the old Jacobin party, and had very 
nearly succeeded. It had been discovered and defeated at the last 
moment, and the principal conspirators had paid the forfeit of 
their lives. But that such a plot should have been concocted and 
have been so nearly carried out, was a pregnant warning of the 
sandy foundation of the Emperor's authority, so far as it depended 
on the fidelity and steadiness of the French. It soon appeared 
that the attachment of his allies abroad was equally hollow ; even 
of those who were most bound to him by personal obligations or 
even by ties of relationship. The first indication of the disposition 
to desert his fortunes, or, to express the feelings of the Princes 
themselves more correctly, to deliver themselves from the shackles 
in which he had so long held them came from his own brother-in- 
law Murat, who, soon wearied of a command in which his own 
dashing valour had no opportunity of displaying itself, threw up 
his command, and retired to his kingdom of Naples, provoking 
Napoleon to such a pitch of irritation that he threatened not ob- 
scurely to dethrone him. IMurat, however, had not yet decided on his 
course : nor can it be denied that the advice which he gave his im- 
perial kinsman, concluded in the form of the most earnest entreaty, 
to give peace to the world, was counsel that might have been dic- 
tated by the most faithful attachment and the soundest judgment. 
But others whose adherence or assistance was far more important 
than that of the great cavalry officer were more openly releasing 
themselves from their bondage. Frederic of Prussia indeed pro- 
fessed a personal unwillingness to exchange his alliance with 
Napoleon for one with Alexander ; nor can it be denied that if he 
had reason to hate the one potentate he had equal cause to distrust 
the other ; but the unanimous voice of his people overruled his 
hesitation ; and in the beginning of March he signed a treaty with 
the Czar. While, though his daughter was sharing Napoleon's 
throne, the Emperor Francis withdrew his troops from further co- 
operation with the French ; and while proffering his mediation to 
all the belligerents, came at the same time to a secret understand- 
' Memoirs of Dumas, vol, ii. p. 424. Eng. Trans. 



556 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1813. 

ing with Alexander, which left it little doubtful what part he 
would eventually take if his attempts to eifect a pacification 
should fail. 

But the more every one else desired peace the more obstinately 
Napoleon seemed bent on war. By great exertions, by anticipating 
the levies of future years, and withdrawing some large divisions 
from the army in the Peninsula which could ill spare them, he 
had again collected an army of above 200,000 men ; of which at 
the beginning of the spring he once more put himself at the head : 
and advanced with all speed to the plains of Saxony, where as yet 
the new allies had no force equal to his own to bring against him. 

The campaign which he opened has no equal in the number or 
the magnitude of the battles which were fought in the course of 
the next six months. But if, in the conduct of his military opera- 
tions Napoleon displayed all his old brilliancy of skill, he exhibited 
in at least an equal degree the most extraordinary political blind- 
ness : stimulated it may be by the fatalism which had always been 
his favourite doctrine. There never was a moment when he might 
not have secured peace by a few coiicessions which would have 
cost nothing to either himself or France ; by simply restoring to 
Austria and Prussia a portion of the provinces of which he had 
despoiled them. But he still believed in his star and in the weak- 
ness of Alexander ; and the chief use which he endeavoured to make 
of the first advantage which he gained was to open a secret nego- 
tiation with that monarch to detach him from his allies. 

There was no doubt that Alexander's firmness was of no high 
order. Had it been he would not have been much alarmed as we 
know that he was at the issue of the first battles of the campaign. 
Napoleon had indeed displayed all his wonted energy and all his old 
skill in those sanguinary combats. One great battle was fought at 
Lutzen, already consecrated by the victory and death of the great 
Gustavus, a week after his arrival at Mayence ; another at Bautzen, 
only a fortnight later ; and in both he remained master of the field 
of battle ; though it can hardly be said that he gained any other ad- 
vantage from either of them. His loss had been at least as great as 
that of his enemies : and Peter the Great would rather have derived 
encouragement from the gallant stand which his troops and those 
of his allies had made, and from the steady discipline of their 
retreat, than have been disheartened at the fact of a retreat being 
necessary. Alexander, however, was of a less manly temper than 
his ancestor ; he was thoroughly alarmed : but at the same time the 
recollection of the vengeance which Napoleon had intended to take 
for his former opposition was fresh in his memory ; but his fear 
now led him not again to humble himself at the victor's feet, but 
to the wiser resolution of holding more closely to the alliance 



A.D. 1813.] THE BATTLE OF DKESDEN. 557 

which alone could protect him against a repetition of such humi- 
liation. 

Little, hoAvever, as Napoleon was really inclined for peace, 
except on terms which, after the disasters of the Russian expedi- 
tion, were wholly inadmissible, even he saw the impossibility of 
refusing to consider proposals of accommodation, and an armistice 
was presently agreed upon for a limited time, to give time for 
negotiations, which undoubtedly everj^one but he himself hoped 
might lead to such a consummation. Indeed, there were circum- 
stances which might well have made him more anxious than any 
other of the belligerents to terminate the war. For, in the very 
week that the armistice was agreed to, his brother Joseph was a 
second time driven from Madrid, and, though he was far from 
anticipating the overwhelming rout of Vittoria which soon 
followed, it was already plain that Spain was lost. Yet when the 
negotiators met, he was as unyielding as if no British army were 
driving his marshals before it in the Peninsula, or as if Friedland 
and Jena and Wagram were the events freshest in the recollection 
of the sovereigns to the east of the Rhine. He professed to make 
it a point of honour to relinquish nothing that he had ever gained. 
He would keep all, or lose all. With fine phrases about 'a 
dishonoured throne, and a crown without glory,' he rejected all the 
conditions proposed by others. He would not even bring forward 
any courted project of his own till the armistice had expired ; and 
when it did expire Austria was at once added to the list of his 
enemies, Bavaria followed her, and by the middle of August, 
France, with no ally but Denmark, whose aid could not possibly 
be of the slightest use, stood single-handed against the world in 
arms. Yet his first battle was a victory as brilliant as had ever 
graced hia arms. In one point of view the accession of Austria to 
the alliance brought it almost as much weakness as strength, since 
the chief command was given to the Austrian general. Prince 
Schwartzenberg, who, though not destitute of professional know- 
ledge, nor of courage, was ignorant of the value of time in war, 
and always lacked energetic resolution when the moment arrived 
to deal a decisive blow. The instant that the armistice was 
broken off, the main army of the allies marched upon Dresden, and 
might at once have captured that beautiful city, had not the 
prince, though he had 160,000 men beneath its walls, resolved, 
against the urgent advice of all the other commanders, to wait for 
further reinforcements which were known to be on their way. He 
gave time not for Klenau to join him, for that general did not 
arrive till the battle was ovei-, but for Napoleon to come to the 
rescue, as, the moment that he heard of the danger of a city which 
was so important to his plans for the campaign, he did come with 



558 MODEEN mSTOEY. [a-d. 1813. 

130,000 men, -witli whom he at once resolved to bring the allies to 
action, j udging that the possession of so strong a fortress in his 
centre would more than compensate for his inferiority of numbers. 
And his calculations were verified by a most decisive victory, 
gained by more tactical skill than he often displayed, and especially 
by the magnificent prowess of the cavalry under Murat, who had 
again joined him, and attested by a long train of 13,000 prisoners, 
and other trophies of war, such as cannon and standards. It was 
a memorable day, as being the last victory on a great scale which 
he ever gained. On the rare occasions on which during the. rest of 
his career he obtained the advantage, the actions were on too 
trifling a scale to afi'ect the fortunes of a campaign. But Dresden 
did for a moment seem to show that liia star was as bright, as 
certainly his genius was as pre-eminent as ever. 

But it was only for a moment that his fortune thus seemed in 
the ascendant. The allies had scarcely commenced their retreat, 
and he had scarcely resolved on the measures to be taken to 
pursue them, when both sides learnt that it was not at Dresden 
only that battles had been fought in this eventful week, and that, 
however irresistible Napoleon had still pi'oved where he commanded 
in person, his lieutenants, though one of them, Macdonald, had had 
an army but little inferior to his own, had been everywhere beaten. 
On the very same day that he himself was scattering his enemies at 
Dresden, Blucher routed that marshal on the Katzbach, gaining 
trophies (18,000 prisoners and about 100 guns) such as Napoleon 
himself had rarely surpassed, four days later Vandamme was 
beaten at Culm ; and at the end of next week the dauntless Ney 
himself sustained at Dennewitz a defeat but little inferior to that of 
Macdonald. Even Napoleon's unyielding spirit could not conceal 
from himself that his enemies were too many for him ; that France, 
exhausted by twenty years of warfare, could not cope with all the 
rest of Europe. And he began to talk to his generals of contenting 
himself with taking up a strong defensive position on the Saale, 
and there watching his opportunity to force his enemies to a 
peace. 

So singularly during this and the preceding year had the great 
events of the Spanish war coincided with critical moments in the 
Russian and German campaigns, that on the very day on which he 
held this conversation his enemies on the other side of his do- 
minions were dealing him a blow which could not fail to exert no 
small influence on any subsequent negotiations. On the seventh 
of October, Wellington, having defeated Soult in a whole series of 
battles, and forced his way triumphantly across the Pyrenees, 
crossed the Bidassoa, and established himself on French soil. But 
those who were in arms in Saxony scarcely needed the encourage- 



A.D. 1813.] NAPOLEON PEEPAEES TO EETEEAT. 559 

ment that the invincible British general's marvellous achievements 
supplied. Napoleon had long had around him all the troops which 
France could furnish ; they, on the other hand, had been receiving 
reinforcements ever since their defeat at Dresden ; others were 
approaching ; and in the very district which he was mentally ap- 
propriating as the base of his own operations, and one which, by 
its central position, would enable him to deal a decisive blow to 
the first of his antagonists who should afford him an opportunity ; 
a host was rapidly being collected which the allies were warranted 
in believing irresistible. He refused to think so, and maintained 
that, for the battle which all saw to be imminent, out of five 
chances four were in his favour, and, though he could not conceal 
from himself that his army was now outnumbered by above 
100,000 men, he occupied himself in planning an advance upon 
Berlin, and a transference of the seat of war to the banks of the 
Oder. But even his bravest marshals unanimously opposed them- 
selves to such a scheme. In their eyes it was indispensable to 
retreat, and to seek winter quarters in their own country even if 
peace should be found to be unattainable, and if it should prove 
necessary to resume operations with the return of spring. 

He yielded, for the first time in his life that he had ever been 
guided by counsel adverse to his own opinion or wish. But in 
fact, even if he had not deferred to those warning entreaties, he 
would have found it impossible to advance, as he did find it im- 
possible to retreat unmolested ; for the allies had placed them- 
selves between him and the Rhine, in the sanguine hope of cutting 
off his retreat altogether. And their confidence was better founded 
than his. His was inspired by that fatalistic belief in his good 
fortune, his star, as he called it, which still suggested that the 
difficulty of handling unprecedentedly large bodies of troops, and 
the. jealousies of the commanders of different nations, might lead 
his enemies into blunders of which he might take advantage. 
Theirs arose from a consciousness of their overwhelming numbers; 
for, by the fifteenth of October, they had 290,000 men and 1,300 
guns around and to the south of Leipsic, which he was approach- 
ing as the first stage in his retreat ; while the French were fewer 
by 115,000 men and nearly 600 guns. He had commanded as 
large an army at Wagram ; such a host as the allies had mustered 
for the battle neither he nor any other general had ever seen on a 
sinde field since the first crusade. It was, as it were, a new 
crusade against an enemy, the continuance of whose supremacy 
they felt to be as dangerous to the liberties of all Europe as that 
of Soliman or Saladiu could have been to its religion. To a 
battle between forces so disproportioned in strength there could be 
but one result. Neither the French Emperor's superiority of skill, 



'560 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.t>. 1813. 

aor the most persevering valour of liis troops, could save him from 
the most overwhelming defeat. The very prisoners who fell into 
the hands of the allies would have composed as large an army as 
that which fought at Salamanca.^ The number of killed and 
wounded is hardly known ; but it was with less than 90,000 men 
that the defeated Emperor now hastened towards the Khine ; and 
even that number was reduced before, on the first days of Novem- 
ber, it crossed the great river. 

To everyone but himself it was plain that France had no longer 
any means of carrying on the war. It was not only that the army 
had suffered enormous losses, but that the population itself was 
exhausted by the continued drain of twenty years of warfare ; and 
a large proportion of the recruits recently raised were far too 
young to endure the toil and hardships of a campaign. Yet 
Napoleon himself still breathed nothing but war. He would 
revenge himself on Russia ; he would chastise Bavaria, which had 
j ust renounced his alliance ; and the first speech which he made 
to the council of state on his return to Paris was a demand of a 
fresh levy of 300,000 men. Money he did not ask ; for he had 
already issued, by his own sole authority, decrees imposing a 
number of additional taxes. But he concluded by indignantly 
reproaching the whole nation for speaking of peace 'while all 
around should resound with the cry of war.' 

Yet a continuance of the war was so far from being forced upon 
him that the allies almost ostentatiously proclaimed their desire 
to treat. And we cannot form a just estimate of Napoleon's in- 
domitable and unaccountable obstinacy, unless we bear in mind 
that during the next three months there was not one day on which 
he might have obtained peace on honorable terms: on terms 
which would not only have secured to his own dynasty permanent 
possession of the throne, as far, at least, as it depended on foreign 
powers, but which would also have left him a more extensive 
dominion than had been enjoyed by any former sovereign of France 
since Charlemagne. Our own government even offered to restore 
to France all the colonies of which our fleets had stripped her. 
But he adopted the idea that his glory required that not only he 
himself should not abandon one of the conquests which he himself 
had made ; but that some of the dominions which he had wrested 
from other princes and had bestowed on his own family should 
be preserved to them ; and the very last proposal which, as late as 
the middle of March, he submitted to the allies, embraced a 
stipulation not only that he himself should retain Flanders and all 

1 Alison enumerates them as of baggage; and besides, also, 23,000 
45,000 ; besides the King of Saxony ; sick and wounded in Leipsie, who 
41 generals, 250 guns ; vast quantities all f«^' into the conquerors' hands. 



&.D. 1814.] THE ALLIES INVADE FRANCE. 561 

the Dutcli proTinces to the west of the Rhine, hnt that his step- 
son, Eugene Beauharnais, should become King of Italy and should 
have the Netherlands added to his dominions, with other equally 
proposterous and inadmissible conditions. The only concessions 
which he made being the release of the Pope and Ferdinand of 
Spain from the captivity in which he had so long detained them, 
but which he now made a merit of terminating, not without a 
secret hope that Ferdinand's reappearance in his kingdom might 
cause some trouble to our government by the fresh aspect which it 
might give to Spanish politics. 

Such unreasonable obstinacy might almost warrant his detrac- 
tors in denying him the gift of statesmanlike sagacity. But it 
must be admitted that if a superiority of warlike genius could be 
an excuse for such presumption, he never displayed that more 
undeniably than in the brief campaign of the following year. He 
was fortunate in his antagonists. The Austrian general, Prince 
Schwartzenberg was a military pedant, too cautious to be energetic 
or even resolute, easily alarmed ; and somewhat hampered in his 
operations by a belief, which probably was not unfounded, that 
his royal master had no desire, if it could be avoided, to crush 
Napoleon so as to endanger the eventual succession of his grand- 
son to the French throne. The Prussian commander. Prince 
Blucher, who had also one or two Russian divisions attached to 
this army, was a warrior of unwearied energy and dauntless re- 
solution, but with only one idea of strategy or tactics ; Marshal 
Frowards was the nickname given him by his men : and he was far 
too eager to be constantly advancing to be cautious or even prudent. 
And Napoleon, who well knew the characters of the two col- 
leagues, saw in the difference between them a prospect of defeating 
both. Yet they were no trifling odds which he had to encounter. 
When, at the beginning of the next year, the allies crossed the 
Rhine, and began to force their way through the frontier pro- 
vinces, the whole amount of the forces which he could collect to 
resist their advance did not exceed 100,000 men ; scarcely more 
than a third of the number of his enemies. 

The campaign may be said to have opened in the last week of 
January ; and in the first days of Februaiy a congress of diplo- 
matists met at Chatillon, to endeavour to effect a peace. Caulain- 
court, a man of great ability, was Napoleon's representative ; and 
not one of the statesmen assembled was more desirous of attaining 
that object than he. But he was constantly baffled by his master's 
obstinacy and bad faith. While he was negotiating, Napoleon was 
fighting; and in Napoleon's eyes every fluctuation of fortune in 
his favour justified a change in the conditions in which he was 
willing to make peace. On the first of February, when Blucher 



562 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1810. 

had overpowered liim at La Rotliiere, he consented to give his 
ambassador full powers to agree to whatever terms the conquerors 
might impose. On the tenth, when he had gained a trifling advan- 
tage over a Russian brigade which only consisted of 5,000 men, he 
recalled those powers : forbad Oaulaincourt to sign anything ; and 
boasted to some of the prisoners that he should soon dictate peace 
to the Czar on the Vistula. And each succeeding combat in- 
creased his confidence. In every one he took guns, he took pri- 
soners ; but the glory which he reaped from his success was worse 
than barren, it was costly ; since a trifling diminution of his force 
was a greater injury to his small army than a heavy loss to that 
of his enemies. And though Schwartzenberg was for a moment 
too much disheartened to perceive this, and began a retreat which 
couid not have failed to be the parent of disaster, he was soon over- 
ruled by the greater pertinacity of Blucher and the firm remon- 
strances of the British minister. Lord Castlereagh, who, though 
Secretary of state, had adopted the unusual though judicious and 
beneficial step of crossing over to Chatillon to conduct the nego- 
tiations in person. 

And, again, the signs of vacillation in the Austrian policy as 
indicated by their general's movements and .by the circumstance 
of the Emperor addressing a private letter of courtesy to Napoleon, 
were productive of further injury to Napoleon by filling him with 
an elation which led him to place his pretensions stUl higher than 
before : while the rise in his demands led the allies, on the other 
hand, to abate the concessions which they had previously been 
Avilling to make, from the conviction which it forced upon them 
that the motive which dictated many of his proposals was a reso- 
lution to renew the war at the first opportunity. They now re- 
fused to treat at all, except on the footing of reducing France to her 
ancient boundaries; and though he, in reply, declared that for him 
to agree to such conditions would be not only disgrace but treason 
to France ; and, though he called on the whole nation to rise in arms, 
as the Spaniards had risen four years before, his own French coun- 
sellors were still far from sharing his opinions, and besought him 
again and again to accept the peace which was still offered to him. 
The minister of Austria, Metternich, pressed the same advice ; 
with the significant warning that his throne was at stake : but his 
resolution was immovable. All or nothing was still his motto. On 
the twenty-first of March the congress of Chatillon was broken up, 
and from that moment all hope of his retaining his crown rhay be 
said to have been virtually extinguished. Indeed the end was 
nearer than any one in either army anticipated. For a day or two 
he still manoeuvred as skilfully and fought as bravely as ever : but 
he himpelf was unable to achieve any success : while some divi- 



A.D. 1814.] PARIS CAPITULATES. 563 

Eions, wliicli he was not commanding, were defeated with heavy 
loss. As a last resource, he tried to alarm the allied generals for 
their communications by marching towards the Rhine. The 
Austrians and Prussians, now united on one hue, replied by march- 
ing on Paris. The great city had no means of resistance : a com- 
bat gallantly maintained by Marmont, and the scanty garrison, 
which was all that Napoleon had been able to leave for its de- 
fence, only showed how really defenceless it was. Joseph, who 
had been driven from Spain by Wellington's victory at Vittoria 
in the preceding year, and who was now acting as governor of the 
city, had no resource but to capitulate, and Paris was ^now sur- 
rendered to the enemy. 

Now, at last. Napoleon gave Caulaincourt full powers to treat 
and to conclude a treaty, but it was too late. France itself, at 
least all of France that was not the army, was weary of him. 
Talleyrand himself, that old revolutionist who had so long enjoyed 
nis confidence, was now the first to urge his dethronement, declar- 
ing that the continuance of his reign was incompatible with tlie 
peace of Europe ; and a provisional government was at once esta- 
blished, which, it was from the first seen, could only lead to 
the restoration of the Bourbons. Burning with disappointment 
and indignation, Napoleon called his chief followers around him ; 
denouncing the capitulation, and proposing to rally all that re- 
mained of the army, and to raise the war cry of the independence 
of the country in the provinces. To his dismay, he found that even 
his marshals were unanimous in protesting against a continuance 
of war. Even Ney was weary of fighting. There was no resource 
but negotiation ; and negotiation meant submission to whatever 
terms the conquerors might dictate. In little more than a week 
his fate was settled. He himself had been in the habit of saying 
that ' from the sublime to the ridiculous was but one step.' And 
his words could never have been more completely verified than 
they were when, by a formal treaty, he stipulated to retain the 
title of Emperor, and consented to exchange the dominion of 
France for that of Elba, a petty island off the coast of Tuscany, 
which though its very existence was previously unknown to all 
but a few miners, was now suddenly elevated to a place among 
European principalities. 

How truly Talleyrand had spoken when he asserted to the 
sovereigns at Paris the desire of the bulk of the nation to be 
delivered from his government was strikingly shown by the events 
which took place during his journey to the coast. The peasants 
of the difi"erent provinces, the citizens of the different towns had 
reaped no benefit from his A'ictories ; war to them had meant only 



564 MODEEN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1815. 

the levying of enormous imposts, the conscription of husbands 
and brothers and sons to recruit his battalions j and they had 
long felt that the object pursued was not the prosperity of the 
country, but the gratification of the lust of conquest in one man. 
Those who felt this, rejoiced in his fall, and with a base ferocity 
collected on his road to insult and revile him. Some would even 
have murdered him ; and more than once he was so alarmed 
that he quitted his carriage, and assumed the disguise of an aide- 
de-camp or a courier, not feeling really safe till he reached Frejus, 
and embarked in an English frigate for his new sovereignty. 

It was not likely that he would stay there. The assignment of 
such a residence to him was the shortsighted act of the Czar, whose 
weak-minded vanity was allured by the opportunity afforded him of 
making a parade of sentimental generosity. And it was instantly 
protested against by Lord Castlereagh, who was unluckily absent 
when it was proposed, but who foresaw and pointed out the 
certainty that Napoleon would not long remain in contentment or 
inactivity in a spot so near to France as to be a constant tempta- 
tion, not only to himself, but to evety one whom -the aspect of 
affairs in France, or the slightest personal or political grievance might 
render discontented. And it was easy to foresee that many inci- 
dents connected with or flowing from a restoration must inevitably 
create discontent. The feeling which the sagacious British minister 
predicted was soon sown, and soon ripened ; in less than ten months 
Napoleon thought the pear once more ripe ; he quitted Elba, with 
a few companies of his old guard, whom, by an imprudence as 
unaccountable as that which gave him his principality, he had 
been allowed to retain in his service ; landed on the French coast, 
and at once began to march towards Paris. His reception as he 
passed on afforded a curious specimen of the innate levity and 
fickleness of the French people. In 1814 his life was hardly safe : 
In 1815 the populace, who would have torn him to pieces as he 
was departing, hailed his return with acclamations. The troops 
who wei-e sent to arrest his progress joined him, shouting his 
name, and often even weeping for joy. Ney himself, who a year 
before had been one of the most outspoken and decided in his 
protests against sacrificing the nation to the ambition of one man, 
yielded to the general enthusiasm, and, though he had accepted a 
command from Louis XVIII. on purpose to arrest his progress, 
joined him with his whole force. The march to Paris was one long 
triumph. Louis XVIII. fled to Ghent and, on the twentieth of 
March Napoleon reached Paris ; and resumed the occupation of the 
Tuileries with as little opposition as on the day when he first 
placed the Imperial crown on his head. 

Everywhere on his march he had spoken of himself as bringing 



A.D. 1815.] THE ALLIES DECLAKE WAE. 565 

the country no longer war but peace. He had professed to hail 
it as an omen of his future reign that the boat -which bore him 
from the ship to the shore was moored to the trunk of an olive- 
tree. He had confessed +o the people of Grenoble that in former 
days he had been too fond of war, and had promised to wage it 
no longer. He had won Ney by declaring that there should be 
no more war. Hia language to the chief bodies in Paris, to the 
most influential individuals, and even to the troops breathed the 
same spirit. But the maintenance of peace did not depend on 
him ; or rather it was incompatible with the position in which he 
had placed himself. A congi-ess of ambassadors from every state 
in Europe was sitting at Vienna when he landed in France. 
Every sovereign instantly declared war against him : every army 
was again put on a war footing ; and in a few weeks those which 
were first ready, an army of Prussians under Blucher, and a mixed 
force of British, Hanoverians, Dutch and Belgians, under the 
Duke of Wellington, were collected in and around Brussels, 
waiting for the development of his plans. From his first arrival 
in Paris, Napoleon had met with greater difficulties then he had 
expected. Each of the different political parties, however wide 
the diversity of the opinions on other subjects, agreed in en- 
deavouring to extort from his necessities concessions favorable to 
their views, while the royalists, who had never been extinguished 
in La Vendee, at once rose in insurrection to maintain the cause 
of Louis XVin., who had fled to Ghent. Against the Vendeans 
the restored Emperor at once sent a small army, which easily 
defeated them. The politicians he postponed dealing with till 
the result of his own campaign, of which he was very sanguine, 
should strengthen his hands. Meantime he applied himself with 
his habitual vigour to the task of organising a body of troops for 
instant operations. And so j udicious were his measures, and so 
eager the enthusiasm of the army, that by the beginning of June 
he had 130,000 men and 350 guns ready to open the campaign in 
Flanders ; and nearly as many more on diH'erent parts of the 
Rhenish frontier. I have said that he was sanguine of the result 
of his first operations, and it is not improbable that the antagonists 
to whom he was first to be opposed were exactly those whom he 
would have preferred. He had long established his superiority 
over all the continental generals : a victory over the great English 
commander, to whom all his most skilful marshals had successively 
proved unequal, was the only thing wanting to the consummation 
of his military glory ; and he was quite aware that Wellington 
was taking the field under great disadvantages. A large portion 
of his Peninsular army was absent in America; and more 
than half of the force which, at the moment he had under his 



566 MODERN HISTOEY. [a.d. 1815. 

orders, consisted of Dutch, Belgians, Brunswickers and Ha- 
noverians, many of whom Napoleon with reason believed to be 
imwilling to fight against him. Even of the British regiments 
many were made up for the most part of new levies ; men whom 
Napoleon had good reason to hope would make but a feeble stand 
against his veterans; so that when, on quitting Paris, he ex- 
claimed that he was ' going to measure himself with Wellington,' 
he no doubt felt assured that he had rarely entered on a campaign 
under more favorable auspices. Of Blucher he made but little 
account. The campaign of 1814 had naturally given him a very 
mean opinion of the old marshal's skill ; and he could not foresee 
how circumstances would render the veteran's indomitable courage 
as efficacious as the most brilliant genius. 

In one point Wellington had an advantage over him, of which 
he was not aware. In the preceding autumn the duke had made 
a minute survey of the country ; and had especially remarked a 
plain in front of the village of Waterloo as afl"ording an unusually 
favorable position for an army, if hereafter it should be necessary 
to protect Brussels against a French invasion. So highly, indeed, 
had he estimated it, that he had employed the engineer officers on 
his staff" to make a careful plan of the plain and the adjacent 
ground : and he was now destined to reap the advantage of his 
foresight.^ 

On the twelfth of June Napoleon left Paris, and on the four- 
teenth reached Avesnes: a fortress not many miles from the 
Flemish frontier ; where his army was eagerly waiting his arrival. 
He lost no time. Of the allies the Prussian army was the most 
advanced ; being spread over a line of cantonments just within the 
frontier : the British outposts were almost equally forwai'd ; but, 
as Wellington had to cover not only Brussels but Ghent, and as not 
fewer than five roads led from the district occupied by the French 
to those great cities, he was forced to keep his head-quarters at 
Brussels till the line of Napoleon's advance should be distinctly 
pronounced. Some skirmishes on the fifteenth revealed the Em- 
peror's design : Blucher fell back to Ligny. Wellington moved 
forward to support his outposts at a small hamlet known, from the 
manner in which at that point the road from Lille to Namur 
crosses the road from Charleroi to Brussels, as Les Quatre Bras. 
And on the sixteenth the great battle may be said to have begun, 
than which the whole revolutionary war, full of struggles and 
triumphs as it had been, had seen none on which ihe future for- 
tunes of the world had so much depended. 

The object of Napoleon was to separate the two allied armies, 

' A facsimile of a part of the plan is given in the author's life of the 
Duke of Wellington, vol. i. p. 564, 



K.i>. 1815.] THE BATTLES OF LIGNY AND QUATEE BRAS. 567 

which as yet were in close communication : and on the afternoon 
of the sixteenth, he fell on the Prussians with a force equal to their 
own : sending Ney with a stout division of 18,000 men to attack 
the British advanced guard; which as yet was all that had been seen 
at Quatre Bras, and keeping another strong division in reserve to 
support either himself or Ney, whenever assistance might be needed. 
Blucher was decisively beaten ; his arrangements were so unskilful 
that Wellington, who visited him in the morning, warned him 
that his defeat was inevitable : and the warning was justified, 
though the old marshal redeemed his want of skill by the most 
heroic gallantry. But Wellington's repulse of Ney's attacks 
counterbalanced that disaster : and enabled him still to keep open 
the communication between the two armies ; and still to continue 
his operations with his indomitable ally. Blucher, who had been 
driven from his position at Ligny, had fallen back on Wavre : his 
retreat rendered a corresponding movement desirable for Welling- 
ton, though victorious ; who, accordingly drew back his army also ; 
and, on the evening of the seventeenth, took up his position on the 
very ground which, ten months before, he had selected as a 
battle-field. The whole history of war affords no similar example 
of skilful foresight so completely realised. 

He had no doubt that on the next day, his and his comrade's 
positions would be reversed : that he should now have to bear the 
brunt of Napoleon's attack : and, expecting to be outnumbered, 
and aware of the inferior quality of many of his troops, he sent a 
message to Blucher to explain to him that he designed to give 
Napoleon battle where he stood, provided the prince could come 
to his support with one division of his army. Blucher replied, that 
he would come not with one division only, but with his whole 
force ; and Wellington, knowing well how implicitly he might be 
relied on, began at once to make his arrangements to avail himself 
of the few advantages which the ground ottered ; occupying one or 
two farmhouses in front of his line ] loopholing the walls ; erecting 
bai-ricades across one or two roads, and employing every expedient 
which ingenuity could suggest to enable his troops, many of 
whom needed every support and encouragement that could be 
desired, to meet the coming storm. 

How terrible that storm would be no man knew better ; for, as 
no man had ever lived, both from knowledge and from candour, 
more capable of appreciating skill in an enemy than Wellington, 
80 no man had ever entertained a higher opinion of Napoleon's 
genius. Napoleon himself, on the other hand, had one very 
dangerous weakness, a proneness to despise and disparage his 
antagonists. He knew that he was superior in numbers to 
Wellington, by some thousands of men, and by nearly 100 guna. 



568 MODEEN niSTOKY. [a.d. 1813. 

And when, having kept cJose to the British army in its retreat 
during the whole of the seventeenth, on the morning of the 
eighteenth he saw them in hattle array awaiting his attack, he 
spoke of his triumph over them as confidently as if the battle was 
over. ' At last,' said he, ' at last I have them, these English.' 
And when Soult, who was by his side, warned him that he had 
never yet met an infantry such as the English who, ' would die ere 
they quitted the ground on which they stood,' and when the 
warning was re-echoed by more than one of those who had tried 
in vain to stand against them in Spain and Guienne, they elicited 
no reply but a disdainful smile. 

In one point of view the battle was fought in a manner favorable 
to Napoleon. He, as I have had occasion to mention before, was, 
even in the eyes of his warmest admirers, but a poor tactician. 
Wellington had never had an equal in the. art of handling troops 
imder tire, and more than one of his battles had been gained 
mainly by his pre-eminent superiority in that branch of skill. 
But at Waterloo there was but little room for display of tactics. 
The French relied on a repetition of assaults made on the British 
line, in great strength, and with the most brilliant impetuosity of 
valour. The object of the British commander was simply to with- 
stand and repel those attacks till the Prussians should join him, when 
he might quit his attitude of defence, and become the assailant in 
his turn. And thus, from before midday till late in the afternoon, 
the battle raged. The superior artillery of the French keeping up 
a ceaseless fire ; Ney leading on heavy columns of infantry against 
the British line ; Keilermann, the hero of Marengo, Milhaud, and 
other generals of equal skill and gallantry, bringing up their 
cuirassiers to charge regiment after regiment, which, throwing 
themselves into squares, repelled their assailants with the most 
deadly fire to which cavalry had even been exposed. In such a 
conflict science was but slightly called forth. It was, as Wellington 
said to those around him, 'hard pounding,' adding, however, that his 
men 'would pound the longest.' At last the leading battalions of 
the Prussians began to appear on the right flank of the French ; and 
both the commanders saw that the critical moment was come. 
Wellington's victory was assured, if he could hold his ground for 
a brief time longer till his allies should have come up in strength 
sufficient to take an active part in the fray. All hope was gone 
from Napoleon, unless he could break the British, not one regiment 
of whom had yet given way throughout the day, before the 
arrival of the new reinforcement. All that could be done he did. 
He detached a brigade of guards under Count Lobau, one of his 
most experienced officers, to hold the Prussians in check. And he 
sent Ney, the hero of the Russian retreat, the bravest of the brave. 



A.D. 1815.] THE BATTLE OJ? WATERLOO. 569 

witli the reserve, tlie flower of the army, the Old Guard, infantry 
and cavalry, to make one last effort for victory. 

On they came ; a cloud of skirmishers preceding them and 
screenings their movements by the smoke of their ceaseless fire ; 
but Wellington had foreseen this, as he had foreseen the direction 
of Napoleon's other most vigorous efforts. He met the assailants 
in front with his heavy infantry. His light infantry was wheeled 
round upon their flanks ; and in a few minutes the whole of the 
advancing foi'ce was thrown into confusion and routed so com- 
pletely that even Napoleon himself could not rally them. Wel- 
lington, seeing that the Prussians were by this time beginning to 
make themselves felt, gave them no time to recover, but led on 
his whole army to the charge. The events of the day, the 
unvaried fruitlessness of all. their efforts had disheartened even 
those French brigades which were as yet unbroken. Not one 
could make a stand against the exulting onset of the British. It 
was in vain that Napoleon, undaunted as ever, threw himself into 
one of the squares of his guard in the vain hope that they might 
yet stem the torrent. In a few minutes they too were driven 
back ; and, exclaiming that ' All was lost for the present,' he at 
last rode slowly from the field. 

We need not pursue his career further. His abdication of an 
authority of which, since his return from Elba, he can hardly have 
been said ever to have had legal possession, met the fate which he 
must have foreseen for it, and was entirely disregarded. His 
attempts to escape to America were baffled by the English cruisers. 
Finally, he surrendered to an English ship of war; and, by the 
English government was detained for the rest of his life in the 
island of St. Helena, with the unanimous sanction of every nation 
in Europe who had learned by bitter experience that peace was 
incompatible with his liberty. With how little magnanimity he 
bore his fall ; how, though he was magnificently treated, though 
he was allowed the society of some of his favourite officers and 
their families, and, indeed, every indulgence that was compatible 
with his safe detention, he vexed Europe and degraded himself 
by childish and impotent querulousness, it is needless to recapitulate. 
After a captivity of six years he died of a cancerous complaint, 
of the same nature as the disease which had proved fatal to his 
lather, leaving behind him in his will a sad proof, not so much of 
his undying animosity to England, as of his continued disregard 
for every principle of honour and humanity, by bequeathing a 
large legacy to a wretch named Chatillon, only known by an 
attempt to assassinate the Duke of Wellington. 

The character of one who rose so high, who fell so completely, 
aud whose elevation and fall were so entirely owing to his own 



570 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1815. 

genius and his own errors, it is not easy to portray : though less 
difficult now than in his lifetime during which he exercised so 
strange a fascination over the minds of his contemporaries, that 
even in Britain he had admirers so enthusiastic that they could 
hardly wish success to the arms of their own country when warring 
against them. But now that half a century has elapsed since he 
was removed from the world, when those who marvelled at his 
victories and those who groaned under his severity have alike 
passed with him from the scene, it is not too soon to expect from 
history a calm and unprejudiced verdict. 

As a general he has had no superior, and prohably but one equal. 
No one has ever had such vast masses of troops under his com- 
mand ; no one has ever guided the operations of far smaller armies 
with more consummate strategical skill. Wellington, who alone 
can be compared with him, had no opportunity of displaying his 
strategy on so grand a scale. On the other hand, if his pre-eminent 
genius achieved some unequalled triumphs ; if it opened to him the 
gates of every capital on thp, continent of Europe as its conqueror, 
it is equally notorious that he met with disasters such as no other 
commander of the first class, not even Frederic the Great, ever 
incurred, and that they were solely attributable to his own want 
of judgment, and to his failure to proportion his enterprises to his 
means. lu tactical ability he was far inferior to his British rival. 
And in j udgment he must be pronounced equally inferior to him 
who never lost a battle ; who, in six successive campaigns, wrested 
Portugal and Spain from his grasp, defeating all his ablest mar- 
shals ; and finally crowned his exploits by the victory over the 
Emperor himself, which has j ust been recorded. Napoleon has him- 
self said that in war the game is with him who commits the fewest 
faults. And, if we allow the brilliancy and orginality of genius 
displayed in Napoleon's early campaigns in Italy, in those which 
led to Austerlitz and Friedland, and in his contest against the 
overpowering hosts of the allies on the plains of Champagne, so to 
counterbalance his undeniable blunders, his loss of his army in 
Russia, and his deficiencies as a tactician, as to place him on a level 
with Wellington, his warmest admirers cannot justly ask for him 
a more candid judgment nor a higher rank. 

But, as we have seen, he was not only a general. He was a 
ruler of a great kingdom. And, in one respect, he might have 
been regarded as exceptionally fortunate in the circumstances 
under which he attained a power to which he had not been born, 
had it not been for his wanton perversity of disposition ; inasmuch 
as he acquired the supreme authority without having been in the 
least implicated in the foul and horrid crimes which had left the 
throne vacant. He had not murdered his sovereign like Cromwell, 



A.D. 1815.] CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON. 571 

nor, whatever opinion may be formed of the intrigues and violence 
hy which the consulate was founded, can his assumption of the 
Imperial dignity be called an usurpation. On the contrary, it was 
conferred on him by the almost unanimous voice of the people, 
fascinated by his military glory, and eager for any government 
which promised stability and tranquillity. It was the mere 
wantonness of contempt for all restraints of national law, of 
humanity, of religion, and of public opinion, that induced him, 
when he might have sat on an unstained throne, to defile his new 
dignity with the murder of a royal prince, and to shed innocent 
blood for no other object than that of striking terror, and, as he 
said himself, of showing the world of what he was capable if en- 
dangered or even irritated. And the consideration of this most 
unprovoked atrocity leads -us to remark his one great pervading 
fault, which goes far to neutralise all his brilliant abilities, to efface 
all his great deeds, and which indeed is incompatible with real 
greatness. He was not cruel, but he was utterly selfish, heartless, 
callous ; he measured everything by its bearing, real or fancied, 
on his personal interests. The feeling is hardly so fully shown in 
his slaughter of his prisoners at Jaffa (an act, but little inferior in 
its heinous ferocity to Cromwell's massacres at Drogheda and at 
Wexford), as in the defence which he was wont to make for the 
deed : as if the mere chance of his being inconvenienced by the 
release of the captives were to be accepted by all the world as a 
sufficient reason for their murder : a crime so horrible and so need- 
less that some even of his own officers recoiled from taking part 
in it. 

It was this same invariable and inveterate selfishness which led 
him to such acts of meanness and perfidy as the forgery attempted 
in the Concordat ; the unparalleled hypocrisy with which, in Egypt, 
he professed himself a Mahometan ; the detention of the British 
travellers ; the kidnapping of the Spanish princes. And to it we 
may also trace that habitual disregard of truth which tain ed his 
conversation, his despatches, and even his familiar letters; and 
which constantly led him to endeavour to throw the blame of 
every blunder and mishap on others, as well as the shamelessness 
which made him perfectly indifferent to detection. 

As we have seen, he professed a desire to be remembered by 
posterity rather for his triumphs of peace than for those of war. 
And, though he probably never was less sincere than when he said 
so, no estimate of him would be fair which left out of sight bis 
labours as a jurist and a legislator, or the comprehensive view 
which he took of the measures best calculated to promote the 
general advance of the nation in material prosperity. Even if his 
policy in these matters was prompted by a view to his own 



572 MODERN HISTORY. [a.d. 1815. 

aggrandisement, to the increase of his own power and glory, yet 
selfishness itself, when thus exerted for the benefit of a nation, 
either ceases to be a vice, or so closely resembles Yirtue as to dis- 
arm our blame. Nor, in regarding Napoleon as a ruler of men, 
sliould we overlook that force jf character by which he bent all 
those with whom he came in contact to his views, even the leaders 
of different parties in France whose professed principles were in 
the most direct antagonism to his authority: nor his singular 
fascination of manner, which often won over those whom neither 
respect for his genius nor even fear of his authority could subdue. 
To those who solely regard, as for many years his countrymen 
solely regarded his bravery, his genius for war, his energy, his ex- 
tensive capacity for government, it is not strange that he appeared a 
hero of unequalled greatness. To those who fixed their eyes on his 
selfishness, his want of magnanimity, his callous contempt for the 
rights of nations, and of humanity ; his acts of perfidy, meanness, 
and falsehood, we cannot wonder that he seemed one of the worst 
and most detestable of tyrants. But it is the province of history 
to correct such precipitate and one-sided j udgments. And the 
equitable candour of posterity, following many of his exploits 
with deserved admiration, and not refusing to make some allow- 
ance for his faults, in consideration of the utter demoralisation of 
his adopted country, and of the age in which he lived, will pro- 
nounce him certainly not the worst of great men, but rather the 
greatest of bad nien.^ 

1 There sank the greatest, nor the worst of men. 

Byron, Chiide Harold, iii. 36. 

The authorities for this and the ence. The Memoirs of de Bour- 

two preceding chapters are ahnost rier.ne, Savary, Las Cases, Matthieu 

too numerous to quote. Among the Dumas, la Duchesse d'Abrantes; 

most important are Histoire de Se'gur's Russian Expedition ; Alison's 

Napoleon ler, par P. Lanfrey (of History of Europe ; Thiers's Con- 

which only four volumes are yet pub sulat et I 'Empire ; Memaires de. Con- 

lished) ; the Napoleon Correspond- salvi, par M. Creteneau-Joly, &c. Ac. 



-D. Appleton & Company's Publications. 



EIGHTEEN CHRISTIAN GENTURIE 

By the Rev. JAMES WHITE, 

AITTHOE OP A HISTOKY OP FKANCE. 

1 vol., 121I1.0. Cloth. 538 pages $1.75. 



OOITTEHSTTS. 

I. Cent. — The Bad Emperors. — II. The Good Emperors. — III. Anarchy and 
Confusion.— Growth of the Christian Church.— IV. The Eemovai to Constantinople. 
—Establishment of Christianity.— Apostasy of Julian. — Settlement of the Goths.— 
V. End of the Koman Empire. — Formation of Modern States. — Growth of Ecclesi- 
astical Authority. — VI. Belisarius and Narses in Italy. — Settlement of the Lom, 
bards.— Laws of Justinian. — Birth of Mohammed. — VII. Power of Rome supported 
by the Monks. — Conquests of the Mohammedans. — VIII. Temporal Power of the 
Popes.— The Empire of Charlemagne. — IX. Dismemberment of Charlemagne's 
Empire. — Danish Invasion of England. — Weakness of France. — Eeign of Alfred. — 
X. Darkness and Despair.— XI. The Commencement of Improvement.— Gregory 
the Seventh. — First Crusade. — XII. Elevation of Learning. — Power of the Church. 
— Thomas a Becket. — XIII. First Crusade against Heretics. — The Albigenses. — 
Magna Charta.— Edward I.— XIV. Abolition of the Order of Templars.— Kise of 
Modern Literature. — Schism of the Church.- XV. Decline of Feudalism.— Agin- 
court.— Joan of Arc- The Printlng-Press.— Discovery of America. — XVI. The 
Eeformation.- The Jesuits.— Policy of Elizabeth.— XVII. English Eebellion and 
Revolution.- Despotism of Louis the Fourteenth.— XVIII. India.— America.— 
France. — ^Index. 



OriNIONS OF TEEX: PRESS. 

Mr. White possesses in a high degree the power -^f epitomizing — that faculty 
which enables him to distill the essence from a mass of facts, and to condense it in 
description; a battle, siege, or other remarkable event, which, without his skill, 
might occupy a chapter, is compressed within the compass of a page or two, and 
this without the sacrifice of any feature essential or significant. — Century. 

Mr. White has been very happy in touching upon the salient points in the history 
of each century in the Christian era, and yet has avoided making his work a mere 
bald analysis or chronological table. — Providence Journal. 

In no single volume of English literature can so satisfying and clear an idea of 
the historical character of these eighteen centuries be obtained. — Home Journal. 

In this volume we have tite best epitome op Christian Histokt extant. 
This is high praise, but at the same time just. The author's peculiar success is in 
making the great points and facts of history stand out in sharp relief. His style 
may be said to be stekeoscopic, and the effect is exceedingly impressive.— iY02)i 
dence Press. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 

By GEORGE TICKIVOR CURTIS. 

Illttstkated with elegant Steel Portraits, and Fine Woodcuts of 

DiFFEKENT ViEWS AT FrANKLIN AND MaRSHFIELD. 

In two vols., small 8vo. .....•• Price, $6.00. 



OPINIONS OP THE PRESS. 

From the London Saturday Reviev). 
" We believe the present work to be a most valuable and important contribution to 
the history of American parties and politics." 

From the New York Tribune. 
" Of Mr. Curtis's labor we wish to record our opinion, in addition to what we have 
already said, that, in the writing of this book, he has made a most valuable contribution 
to the best class of our literature." 

From the New YorJc Journal of Commerce. 
" The author has made it a very readable volume, a model biographj- of a most gifted 
man, wherein the intermingling of the statesman and lawyer with the husband, lather, 
and friend, is painted so that we feel the reality of the picture." 

From the Boston Post. 
"Mr. Curtis has accomplished his labor with a fidelity that demonstrates how truly 
it was inspired by love. From earliest boyhood, through his protracted professional and 
public career, he has followed the rising and expanding fortunes of his distinguished 
subject, sketched the growth and operations of his mind, portrayed his domestic life, 
shown the power of his speech over courts. Senate, and people, and given us Webster 
more as he was than we have had him before us since he disappeared from the sight 
of men. This 'Life of Webster' is a monument to both subject and author, and one 
that will stand well the wear of time." 

From the Boston Courier. 
"It may be considered great praise, but we think that Mr. Curtis has -written the 
life of Daniel Webster as it ought to be written." 

From the Boston Journal. 
" Mr. Curtis, it will be remembered, was one of the literary executors named by 
Mr. Webster, in his will, to do this work, and owing to the death of two of the others, 
Mr. Everett and President Pelton, and the advanced age of Mr. Ticknor, Mr. Curtis 
has prepared the biography himself, and it. has passed under Mr. Tieknor's revision. 
We believe the work will satisfy the wishes of Mr. Webster's most devoted friends." 

From the Chicago Journal. 
"I rejoice that the life and character of Webster are so large and so precious an 
inheritance to us all. Mr. Curtis has handled his task with judgment, and made an ef- 
fective and exceedingly satisfactory book, one to take its unquestioned place with the 
invaluable memorials of American progress which we owe to Palfrey, Bancroft, and 
other American historical writers of the first rank." 

From the Springfield Daily Republican. 
" In the execution of his task, which he truly calls a labor of love, Mr. Curtis has 
done his best, and his success is greater than we had reason to expect. The book is 
interesting — it could scarcely be otherwise — and gives much information that is either 
new or had been generally forgotten." 

From the St. Louis Republican. 
"It is a work which will eventually find its way into every library, and almost 
every family." 

D. APPLETON & CO., Pablislicrs, New York. 



D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 



THE ONLY COMPLETE AND TmiPORM EDITIO>. 



LORD lACAULAY'S WORKS, 

EDITED BY HIS SI8TEK, 

8 Vols., larg-e 8vo. Price, cloth, $32.00 ; lialf calf extra, 

$48.00 ; full calf extra, $52.00. Beautifully priuted in 

large clear type, on thick toned paper, with a fine 

portrait engraved on steel by W. Holl. 



In pr8paring for publication a complete and uniform edition of Lord 
Macaulay's Works. It has been thought right to include some portion of what 
he placed on record as a jurist in the East. The papers selected are the Intro- 
ductory Report on the Indian Penal Code, and the Notes appended to that code, 
in which most of its leading provisions were explained and defended. These 
papers were entirely written by Lord Macaulay, but the substance ol them was 
the result of the joint deliberations of the Indian Law Commission, of which 
he was President. They are by no means merely of Indian interest, for while 
they were the commencement of a new system of law for India, they relate 
chiefly to general principles of jurisprudence, which are of universal applica- 
tion. 

The contents are arranged in this edition as follows : Vols. I. to IV., History 
of England since the Accession of James the Second; Vols. V., VI., and VIL, 
Critical and Historical Essays, Biographies, Eeport and Notes on the Indian 
Penal Code, and contributions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine; Vol. VllL, 
Speeches, Lays of .-Vncient Rome, and Miscellaneous Poems. 

This last division of the work is completed by the insertion of the Cavalier's 
Song and the Poetical Valentine to the Hon. Mary C. Stanhope, two pieces 
whicli weie not included in previous editions of Lord Macaulay's miscellaneoua 
writings. 

" Every admirer of Lord Macaulay's writings (and their name is legion) 
will heartily thank Appleton & Co. for having produced this elegant edition of 
his works. It seems almost idle to say any thing in praise of the great his- 
torian to the American reader, but we cannot forbear expressing our admiration 
of the physical as well as mental strength so manifest in his diction and style. 
. . . . But it is not our intention to write a critique on the man whose 
memory holds so prominent a place in the heart of the reading world. The 
volumes before us should till a niche in every public and private library in our 
laud." — Glen Falls Journal. 

" His writings and his speeches, arranged in chronological order, exhibit the 
developments of a mind always more or less powerful, and announce the ex- 
tent of his reading and the tenacity of his memory. His contributions to the 
History of British India show how usefully his time was spent during his so- 
jjurn at Calcutta." 

tS^ B. Appleton & Co.'s Descriptive Catalogue maybe had gratuitously 
oa application. 

D. APPLETON & CO., 

Publishers, Booksellers, & Stationers, 

';4g &" '5'; I /!madway, Neiu York. 



A HISTORY OF ENGLAND 

IK THE 

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

By WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY, 

Author of "History of the Kise and Influence of the Spirit of Katioualism in 
Europe," " History of European Morals, from Augustus to Charlemagne," etc. 

3 TOlB., 12mo. Cloth, $5.00. 



Some Topics selected, from the Contents. 



Whigs and Tories. 

Godolphin and Marlborough. 

Literature under Anne. 

Sacheverell and the Clergy. 

Oxford, Bolingbroke, Swift. 

Nonconformists — Quakers. 

Parliamentary Corruption and Tyranny. 

Irish Penal Code. 

Robert Walpole. 

Drunkenness — Gambling. 

Fleet Marriages. 

Newspapers. 

Architecture, Painting, Music, and the 

Drama. 
English Laborers. 
North American Colonies. 



Commercial Restrictions. 

Slave-Trade. 

Scotland: The Highlands, Scotch Re- 
ligion, Progress. 

Ireland : Resources, Country Life, Pol- 
itics, Religion, Emigration. 

Priest-Hunting, 1711-1730. 

The Duke of Newcastle. 

Pitt— Fox. 

CoDquest of Canada. 

Conquest of Hindostan. 

Religious Revival. 

Observance of Sunday. 

Wesley— Whitefield. 

Religion iu Wales. 



Other writers, and among them notably Lord Stanhope, have published works 
covering, in great measure, the same period which Mr. Lecky has here chosen 
to treat of; but the plans, objects, and the classes of facts on which the present 
history especially dwells, are so very different from all preceding histories as to 
constitute an entirely distinct production. Nest to impartiality, nothing has so 
distinguished Mr. Lecky as his power of massing facts, and preserving their due 
relation and subordination. The strict order of chronology he in some cases 
departs from, for, as he observes, " the history of an institution, or a tendency, 
can only be written by collecting into a single focus facts that are spread over 
many years, and such matters may be more clearly treated according to the order 
of subjects than according to the order of time." This is, indeed, the philosophy 
of history; and, instead of giving a dry narrative of events year by year, it has 
been Mr. Lecky's object " to disengage from the great mass of facts those which 
relate to the permanent forces of the nation, or which indicate some of the more 
enduring features of national life, and to present the growth or decline of mon- 
archy, the aristocracy, and the democracy, of the Church and of Dissent, of the 
agricultural, the manufacturing, and the commercial interests ; the increasing 
power of Parliament and of the press ; the history of political ideas, of art, of 
manners, and of belief; the changes that have taken place in the social and 
economical condition of the people; the influences that have modified national 
character ; the relations of the mother-country to its dependencies, and the 
causes that have accelerated or retarded the advancement of the latter." 

D. APPLE TON & CO., 549 &"S5i Broadway, N. Y. 



S^ 



K 716 



QJ 



K 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

IIIIIPIIIIIIIIIIIII 

018 462 892 2 9^ 



mm 
pwm 

. !ii{' M: • (It 



mwm 



Bill 

IMIH M il ,: 



